


The Naked Bus

by lilyhandmaiden, MediaevalMuse



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alien Biology, Friendship, Gen, Russia, Star Trek: TOS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-14 18:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2200989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyhandmaiden/pseuds/lilyhandmaiden, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MediaevalMuse/pseuds/MediaevalMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Agents of SHIELD version of the Star Trek: TOS episode, "The Naked Time" (though you don't need to have seen the episode to enjoy this). The team investigates an 0-8-4 which removes their emotional inhibitions to a dangerous degree. There is singing. There is fighting. There is dubious science.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not that kind of naked.  
> Not that kind of bus.
> 
> Odd chapters written by MediaevalMuse. Even chapters written by lilyhandmaiden.

Skye, Simmons, Fitz, and Ward cautiously entered the compound, a desolate wasteland dotted with abandoned buildings and veined with weeds poking through neglected cracks in the concrete walkways. Other SHIELD agents formed a protective circle around the area, blocking out any potential trespassers, and May and Coulson begrudgingly endured the presence of Agent Hand as she gave them the lowdown on the scene.

Someone had found several bodies, those of drug lords and other petty criminals, as well as a strange device, which promptly alerted SHIELD to the possibility of an 0-8-4. They had called Coulson’s team solely for the fact that their biochemist was the most qualified agent to assess any potential connection between the device and the bodies of the criminals. After all, she had once been infected with an alien virus and produced an antiserum, and the rest of the team had been mentally and bodily affected by an Asgardian staff. Of all the agents, these were the ones with the most experience and they were necessary, despite the friction between them and their supervisors from the Hub.

Now, Simmons was anxiously anticipating a gruesome scene, fraught with blood and missing body parts. Fitz would definitely have a problem if that were the case.

Staring at the first building, she watched as a group of agents carried a heavy box out the door, their black suits looking strange against their latex-gloved hands. The box didn’t seem particularly heavy, but the number of agents circled around it startled the team, making Simmons wonder what could possibly be inside.

“What does the device look like?” she asked Agent Hand.

“That’s classified,” she snapped, silencing Simmons with a sharp look. Simmons sighed and watched the agents load the box into a waiting truck. One of them removed his gloves and scratched his nose. _That can’t be part of scientific protocol,_ she thought. _He ought to have been decontaminated first._

Still, she shrugged, and turned her attention to the task before her.

“Now, when we go in, be careful not to touch anything,” Simmons instructed, snapping on a pair of blue latex gloves. Fitz held a tri-folded tablet in his hands, ready to deploy his army of tiny data-collecting drones, called the DWARFs.

“Why exactly am I here?” Skye asked. “Not that I don’t want to help, it’s just… this is a bit outside my expertise.”

“You can help collect the samples,” Simmons added, handing Skye a large bin and a stack of empty plastic bags. “Fitz is rather useless when it comes to blood.”

“Thanks,” Fitz mumbled without looking up from his tablet. Skye sighed and took the bin, but Simmons noted that she couldn’t hide the look of boredom on her face.

“Great,” she said.

Fitz pressed a few icons on his tablet and opened his own case, whereupon seven robotic machines came flying out and up into the air. “DWARFs are go,” he said proudly, pulling up seven screens on his tablet. Simmons nodded and stepped into the building, feeling authoritative and confident as she was followed by the drones and the rest of the team.

The scene was shocking, but not as they had expected. There was no smell of blood in the air, no splattered walls or piles of rubble, no evidence of a struggle of any kind. Instead, a few bodies sat around a table and one lay carelessly on the floor, like a child’s toy lazily abandoned for more novel pursuits. Simmons found the scene uncanny, and eerily reminiscent of a science fiction film she had seen some years ago.

“They didn’t even finish their drinks,” Skye said, gesturing to a few half-full bottles of beer.

Fitz manoevered a DWARF so that it hovered just above one of the tables. “There’s an awful lot of drug paraphernalia lying around.” Sleepy scanned one of the many needles that littered the table.

Ward craned his neck to look past the others, almost having to shout from his position near the door. “Could it have been a mass overdose?” he suggested. “Maybe a bad batch of something?”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” Simmons said, lifting the eyelid of one of the bodies. “Some of them might have, but there are no outward signs showing that’s the case for all of them. If they all overdosed, you’d expect them to have discoloration or pupil dilation. But they look healthy, for the most part. It’s more like they just… stopped living. Just in the middle of whatever they were doing.”

“It _is_ strange,” Skye agreed.

“Well,” Simmons said, smiling at the challenge. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

Simmons directed Ward to remain stationed by the door, not wanting anyone to disturb the scene as she busied herself with collecting samples and recording data. She noticed that Fitz kept his eyes fixed on his tablet, queasy from the presence of bodies despite the lack of any obvious signs of violence. Skye looked around with seemingly limited interest, holding open bags and labeling samples of dirt and saliva that came her way.

“How many other buildings are like this?” she asked. Simmons handed her one of the beer bottles.

“Two more,” she replied, herself a little daunted by the task at hand. Skye groaned and Simmons thought she heard Ward snicker behind her as she opened her biomedical case and drew out several syringes. Fitz turned his back to her.

“If you’re taking blood samples, do it quick,” he said. Skye laughed at his discomfort.

“Afraid of a little human juice?” she teased. Fitz’s jaw dropped open and he made a point not to look at her either.

“Don’t call it that,” he warned. Simmons couldn’t help but smile to herself, enjoying Skye’s playful pokes at her lab partner.

“Are we collecting any viscera?” Skye asked, smirking at him. Fitz made a motion not unlike dry heaving.

“That is so gross.”

Finally, Simmons’ pity won out. “Skye,” she interrupted, “will you come help me, please?” She delicately inserted a needle into the neck of one of the corpses, noting how easily it buried itself into the skin before she slowly drew out the plunger, collecting a large vial of maroon-colored blood. “I’ll need to get one from every victim,” she said, putting a protective sheath over her needle and dropping it into an open bag. Skye retrieved the bag and scribbled a label on it with a sharpie.

“DWARFs aren’t picking up anything,” Fitz announced. “Maybe I should go to the next building. Save us some time.”

“I just think you don’t want to be in here while Simmons is doing her thing,” Ward joked.

Simmons looked to Fitz and gave him an approving nod. “You go ahead,” she agreed. “I’ll still be a while, anyway.” Fitz nodded back at her and left the building, Ward in tow. Simmons almost felt a little sorry for him, how he was always uncomfortable with her dissections and test subjects after all the years of working side-by-side. She briefly wondered if he would ever get over it.

As the minutes ticked by, Simmons continued to collect tissue samples, from blood to hair to skin, and carefully deposited them into Skye’s waiting hands. She was right, this process was taking some time, and she saw Skye try to distract herself by examining each of the bodies. She continued to work with professional diligence, running through scientific protocols in her head each time she collected something from the bodies. Nothing struck her as out of the ordinary, apart from them being dead, and scientifically, that made them fascinating. She couldn’t wait to analyze her data back at the lab.

“Hey, Simmons,” she heard Skye suddenly say, “Come look at this.” Simmons gasped in horror when she saw that Skye was folding forward the cartilage of the ear of one of the bodies.

“Skye! Don’t touch the bodies without gloves!” she scolded, rushing around the table towards her teammate.

“Oops.” Skye snatched her hand away from the ear and the biochemist gave her a brief disapproving look before using her own gloved hands to take a look at the body.

“It’s nothing,” Simmons announced after a brief look. “Just a birthmark.” But she did notice something peculiar: the body had droplets of moisture on it, like it had been sweating. _Funny,_ Simmons thought. _That should have evaporated by now._

“Funny looking birthmark,” Skye said as wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans. Simmons shook her head and cleared her thoughts, moving to take a sample of the moisture on the corpse’s skin.

“Don’t worry,” Simmons replied, bagging the last of her samples. “Now come on. We should collect samples from all the other bodies in this compound before dusk.”

She gathered up her biomedical kit and led the way to the next building, Skye following closely behind her.

***

SHIELD retained possession of the bodies, so Simmons had to make do with her samples aboard the Bus. The 0-8-4 in question was confiscated by Agent Hand and her team, and Coulson’s agents never saw the actual item before it was whisked away to the vaults.

After promising to send the lab results to headquarters in a few hours, Coulson and his team left the scene for another mission some eight thousand miles away.

“Simmons,” he said. “I want those lab results by the time we reach out next destination.”

“Yes sir,” she replied. As soon as they took off, she began to run tests, curious as to why the bodies still had perspiration on the skin’s surface.

But the more tests she ran, the more she became confused. Nothing was out of the ordinary, and everything was coming back normal (at least by SHIELD standards). There was nothing apparently wrong with the bodies aside from being dead. They had all died by simple, human methods, nothing supernatural or irregular as far as she could determine. Simmons felt herself feeling more frustrated than she had been in a long time.

They had been in the air for a few hours when she heard a loud clamoring noise, causing the whole Bus to lurch and begin to lose altitude. Simmons fell against her lab table, her body shaking as much as the equipment around her. _Are we crashing?_ she thought.

“Everyone, stay calm,” May announced over the intercom. “I’m going to have to make an emergency landing.”

Fitz and Simmons looked at each other in panic, and Simmons hurriedly tried to secure all breakable items, desperate to preserve her research. Fitz grabbed her by the arm.

“There’s no time,” he said, almost at a yell. The noises from the plane were getting louder and more unsettling. “We’ve got to go to the cargo hold and strap up.”

“But my work!” Simmons protested. Fitz tugged on her more urgently, and she regretfully gave in, running alongside him as the plane lurched and sent them traveling at an unsteady pace.

Ward and Skye soon joined them in the cargo hold, and they all worked together to pull down seats from the walls and bind themselves tightly with buckles and straps. Simmons noticed Skye wiping her hands on her pants, seemingly nervous from the peril they were in. She wanted to reach out and comfort her, to hold her hand and reassure them both that May would land the Bus safely, but they were separated by Fitz.

Ward sat on the other side of Simmons and leaned over to shout across her at Fitz once they had all been safely secured.

“Any idea what could cause this?” he asked. The noise of the failing plane was louder than it had ever been, metal clanking on metal, engines revving and heaving tiredly as they dropped from the sky. Fitz shook his head, and they all braced themselves for a crash.

They did not crash, but landed intact, though not smoothly.

As the plane came to a jarring halt, Simmons saw Skye grip Fitz’s hand.

“You alright?” he asked, looking down at their hands. Skye immediately pulled away and began rubbing her palms together.

“Fine,” she said. Fitz nodded and helped her untangle herself from the straps as Ward freed himself and assisted Simmons.

“What happened?” Skye wondered aloud, still rubbing her hands together. Simmons looked at Fitz, who shrugged.

“I’ll see if I can have a look,” he replied, seeing May and Coulson come rushing down the stairs towards them. Coulson looked concerned, and Simmons watched as the commanding officer whispered something urgently to Ward, who immediately took off towards the second level of the plane. _Strange,_ she thought. But she didn’t question any of their actions and set to investigating the damage to her lab, too worried about her research to care.

***

Coulson, May, and Fitz climbed out of the Bus and examined the damage, the former anxiously crossing his arms over his chest. They still had not figured out what had caused the Bus to fail, and Coulson felt himself overcome with dread as they stepped out into a snowy wasteland. “Can you fix it?” he asked, the wind nipping at his ears and nose. Fitz caught one of his DWARFs in his hand, looking at the results displayed on his tablet.

“It’s going to take me a while,” he replied. “The engines are blown out and the power’s nearly gone, and I’m no plane expert.”

The wind was whistling, making communication difficult, and Coulson considered how long they would last in this cold. If their power went out completely, they’d have few ways of communicating with SHIELD and they’d soon freeze. He did not want his team to die like that.

“Can you give us power some other way?” Coulson asked. Fitz nodded.

“I can reroute the energy from some of our gadgets in the lab,” he said through the howling wind. “They should sustain us for a few hours, at least, but we can’t go draining them. Only the essential functions.”

Ward emerged from the Bus a few seconds later, making a determined stride towards his commanding officer. He had been smart enough to don a coat.

“Sir,” he reported, giving Coulson a look of pointed worry, “our sensors show that Department X knows we’re here and are sending armed forces straight towards us.”

Coulson felt a pit drop in his stomach.

“What’s Department X?” Fitz asked.

“Like the Russian equivalent of SHIELD, only more like Hydra from World War Two,” May replied. “They put together the Winter Soldier.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant! Their technology is like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Fitz said, but then, realizing his error, “and bad. Very bad. Very… unethical use of science.” Coulson sighed.

“How long do we have before they get here?” he asked. Ward shrugged.

“Two hours, maybe three at most. They have to make their way over the snow, and this isn’t exactly the perfect locale for a major base, so we’ve got that in our favor.”

“But they’re coming,” May continued. “They must have spotted us on their radar.”

Coulson looked to Fitz. “You better work fast.”


	2. Part 2

The state of the lab was not good. Broken glass crunched under Simmons’s shoes as she approached her workspace, and even through the dim red emergency lights, she could see that more than half her samples from the compound were lost, either contaminated or destroyed. She hurried to clean up and contain the mess, in case anything from the samples she’d collected proved to be dangerous after all, and only as she was getting the decontamination supplies together did she notice her hands were shaking.

_This is okay,_ she told herself, breathing in deeply. _This has happened before. It’s not a big deal. Just clean up and move on with what you can. It’s okay._ She hurried to get everything back in order, but she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding rapidly, and while she dumped the broken glass into the biohazard containment bin, she felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. 

When the plane had been going down, she’d focused so single-mindedly on her work that she couldn’t think of anything else. Now that it was over and there was nothing to do but tally the loss and move on, the memory, the feeling crept up on her like a rising tide-- not as bad as it would have been, had she not been strapped into a seat, surrounded by the familiar interior of the plane and unable to see out-- but still that sensation of brief weightlessness, and then the plunge of falling and falling and falling out of the sky…

She sat down at her station, taking the pressure off her quivering knees, and she was just starting to feel calmer when Fitz, teeth chattering, rushed in and pulled up a schematic of the plane on the holotable. He studied the image, one finger tapping his lower lip, glancing only briefly at Simmons through the translucent fuselage.

“We’ve got some problems,” he said tersely. “And a time limit, as per bloody usual. What can you spare power from in here?” He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, trying to warm himself.

“I’m not sure.” Her voice was still shaky, and he noticed.

“Are you all right? You didn’t get hurt in the crash, did you?” He stepped closer to her, looking at her face and scrutinizing every feature. He made a motion to touch her, but Simmons backed away, eager to diffuse his worry.

“No, just didn’t particularly enjoy it. I lost a lot of samples. What happened?”

“A fault in the engines overworked them-- let me tell you, I am going to have words with whoever fitted engines like that to something this size-- Can I divert from this?” Fitz rubbed his hands together and started to save and store the files on the holotable.

“What? No, no, no! You can’t have the table! I’m working on it, it’s almost all I’ve got left!” Simmons rushed forward and started pulling the files back up.

“Well, I need to jumpstart the plane before we get caught up in a land war in Russia!”

This brought Simmons up short. “Really?” She was met with his steady, serious, not-messing-around glare.

“Ward told us Department X is coming. They’re the ones who-”

“Put together the Winter Soldier!” Simmons exclaimed. Fitz looked at her in surprise and she shrugged. “Ethics of Scientific Research and Development. Weren’t you paying attention?” She glanced at the holotable, a pained look flashing across her face. “All right, you can use that. But try not to drain everything.”

He set up the power diversion from his tablet and waited until the lights in the lab flickered and dimmed further before hurrying back out. In the doorway, he passed Skye, who was compulsively rubbing her hands on the sleeves of her shirt. The hacker hesitated in the unexpected darkness, looking uncertain as to whether or not she should proceed.

Simmons smiled in greeting and beckoned her in. “Nothing to worry about, just diverting some power to the plane. Can I help you with something?”

“Um, yeah. Maybe.” Skye took several small steps forward. “It’s just, my hands are kind of tingly? And sweating a lot.”

Simmons frowned. “Well, that could be an anxious reaction due to the plane plummeting out of the sky and almost killing us all.”

“I don’t think so.” Skye shook her head. “No, it started before that.”

“You mean… when we were at the compound with the 0-8-4?” Simmons tried to ignore a sinking feeling in her stomach entirely different from the one caused by the falling plane.

“Maybe then. Maybe a little bit after then.” Skye narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Did it start before or after you touched that dead man?”

“What does that matter? Geez, get off my back about that, okay?”

“It matters,” Simmons said firmly, “because you may have become contaminated by something on the body.”

Skye stepped back a few paces, her hands and voice raised. “Oh, so this is all my fault, right? I’m just some massive fuck-up.”

The lights flickered again as power from the lab jolted into the plane’s engines.

“I didn’t say that.” Simmons’s brows knit in confusion and concern. “I’m just worried that--”

“You don’t need to _worry_ about me, I can handle myself!” Skye snapped. “And don’t patronize me, either-- you’re not my mom, okay?”

“I-- I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to--”

“Look, we all know I don’t belong out in the field. You guys have made that abundantly clear. So just get back to your freakshow science and leave me alone! Can you handle that?”

Once more the emergency lights flickered, and the rumble of starting engines sounded muffled through the air. Without another word, Skye spun on her heels and stormed out, leaving Simmons dumbfounded in her wake. “Well. O...kay.”

Before she could fully process what seemed to be a definite overreaction on Skye’s part, the lights in the lab came back up and she heard the familiar whir of the holotable rebooting. Maybe something in or on that 0-8-4 had contaminated Skye and was causing the reaction in her hands… and if so, Simmons knew she needed to figure out what it was as quickly as possible, and now she was without most of her meticulously collected evidence. She could worry about her friend’s feelings later. 

Since she’d been getting nowhere with the tests she’d been doing on the samples, she decided to start fresh from a different angle. The first images she pulled back up on the table were the scans of the compound, and she set about virtually re-exploring every inch of the site as recorded by their equipment, searching for anything she might have missed. Zooming in closely on one of the bodies on the floor, she reexamined a dead woman who had marks around her neck which detailed analysis showed to be bruising. A rapid comparison to the other bodies showed nothing similar, but her eyes settled on the drug paraphernalia by the side of one of the men. She pulled up the results from his blood sample on her tablet, confirming his death by overdose. However, something caught her eye as less than ordinary.

“Huh,” she muttered to herself, examining the skyrocketed numbers from the report. “He should have passed out long before he injected that much cocaine into his system.” 

Simmons scrolled swiftly through the other test results she’d managed to process before the crash. She’d been so focused on searching for alien contamination, she’d neglected to search for patterns in the information she had. That, she decided, was where she would focus her attention now.

Ten minutes later, Coulson entered the lab to find her still engrossed in her research. He cleared his throat, and she looked up.

“Oh, hello, sir. Everything in working order now?”

“It seems that way, but the power is running low. May says wheels up in ten. If we keep everything but the lab down to essential functions, we should be able to make it to Vienna easily.”

Simmons raised an eyebrow. “Everything _but_ the lab, sir?”

“That’s right. We’ll need your investigation to proceed as quickly as possible. A few minutes ago, we got a message from Agent Hand. Because of the power problems, it went straight to voicemail, in a manner of speaking, and we can’t contact SHIELD or reply until we get to Vienna. But she confirms that the 0-8-4 is alien. Her scientists found residue indicating that it had traveled through space.”

“Oh, that’s fascinating news!” Simmons enthused.

“That’s not all. One of the men who handled it has apparently committed suicide. He suddenly became agitated and started ranting about how we shouldn’t be interfering with what we don’t understand. He fought off everyone who tried to restrain him, and… well.”

Simmons thought about the agent who had scratched his nose back at the compound, breaking scientific protocol. “That’s terrible.”

“Agent Hand said she’d never seen him like that, as if he were…”

“Irrational? Drugged?”

“Exactly.” Coulson looked surprised. “How did you know?” 

“I’ve been analyzing these samples, sir, and none of these people died from anything alien.” One by one, she scrolled through images on the holotable. “Most of them overdosed on cocaine, heroin, various combinations of drugs. This man had alcohol poisoning, this one choked on his own vomit. This woman was strangled. Some of them died from dehydration or starvation. This man apparently fell asleep outside, naked, and died of exposure. It’s as though their inhibitions lowered to the point that they all just… stopped caring.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the ones who overdosed had way too many drugs in their system. They should have passed out before they took as much as what shows up in their toxicology reports.”

“Could they have gotten a bad batch, laced with something that killed them or affected them in ways they weren’t expecting?”

“If we were dealing with one type of drug, I’d say maybe, but these people altogether ingested massive quantities of at least four different street drugs in assorted combinations, while some of them only had alcohol. There’s no common denominator. And what about all the others? Those who died from starvation… that takes days. They would have had to deliberately refrain from looking for food. I’d say it might have been some sort of ritual murder-suicide pact, if not for…”

“For the presence of the 0-8-4.” Coulson nodded.

“And now Agent Hand’s man. Could that be coincidence? I mean, it was a very grisly scene. It could have affected him.”

Coulson looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. But we have a pattern of people coming into contact with this 0-8-4 and exhibiting irrational and destructive behavior. I want you to get to the bottom of it, the sooner the better.”

“I can try, sir, but I lost most of my samples in the crash, and besides, our instruments can only test for things we know about.”

“You did it with the Chitauri virus,” Coulson said firmly. “You can do it with this.”

Simmons nodded. “Yes, sir.”

She was already constructing a new course of action in her head when, abruptly, a voice called out from the door to the lab behind them: “We have a problem.” It was Melinda May, and she looked angry.

“What is it?” Coulson checked his watch. “I thought we were leaving.”

“We should be,” May all but growled. “I can’t get into the cockpit.”


	3. Part 3

A screeching sound emitted over the intercom, grating on their eardrums and forcing Simmons, Coulson, and May to cover their ears in pain.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Agent Fitz speaking,” came a voice. “I have repaired the engines on the Bus and we shall soon be on our way to Vienna.”

“What’s he doing?” Coulson asked, staring at May. She shrugged.

Suddenly, the bus lurched as the engines roared to life. They sounded sputtery, and they coughed and shook with uncertain power. Simmons looked to her superior officers for an explanation.

“He must just be testing the engines,” she said, but the voice on the intercom cut her short.

“Everyone strap in,” Fitz announced. “These engines will hold us up for a few hours. Until then, rest assured that you will be safe as we glide over the snowy banks of Russia and into the green meadows of Europe.”

“What?” Simmons said, appalled at his cheesy travel-guide announcement. She looked at Coulson to see his eyes widening in panic.

“He’s going to try to fly the plane!” Coulson said, the realization dawning on him.

“He can’t!” Simmons said. “He’s not a pilot!”

The three of them sprinted from the lab towards the stairs, their shoes making heavy thudding noises as they dashed through the lounge towards the cockpit. Simmons saw Coulson reach out a hand for the door, but they all stopped short, barely avoiding running into one another.

“Open the door!” May instructed. Coulson grimaced.

“I can’t!” he said. “He’s locked himself in.”

Simmons pushed her way through and pounded on the door. “Fitz!” she yelled. “What are you doing? Open the door!”

“I’m going to get us out of here, Jemma!” came a muffled voice from inside.

“What are you talking aout? You can’t fly a plane!”

“Sure I can.”

The bus shook again, making Simmons’ heart flutter nervously. It felt like they would fall apart just by taking off.

“Fitz,” she said, her voice edged with desperation, “come on, May’s right here. Let her fly the Bus.”

“Fitz!” Coulson yelled. “Open this door right now!”

“No!”

The Bus shook yet again, and Simmons found herself grasping at the walls for support. Fitz couldn’t fly the plane. Why was he trying to? Why did he need to be the hero all of a sudden?

“Simmons,” Coulson said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Do you have anything in the lab that can cut through these doors?” His eyes and voice were sincere, looking at her through a mask that was trying to cover up the amount of panic he felt. It was no matter, for Simmons saw through it. She felt the same way.

“Maybe,” she said. “I can alter some of our equipment to produce a highly-concentrated blast of energy using thermonuclear-”

“English, please.”

She sighed sadly. “I can try, but this is Fitz’s expertise.”

“Do it,” Coulson said. “We need to get through that door before Department X arrives.”

“How long is that, sir?”

“About an hour and twenty minutes.”

The intercom sizzled again.

“He’s going to drain the power if he keeps doing that,” May said flatly.

“For your in-flight entertainment,” Fitz announced. “I will be singing you a traditional Scottish ballad.”

“Oh god,” Simmons moaned, dropping her head in her hand.

“When I wake up…” he sang, “well, I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who wakes up next to YOU!” He placed a heavy accent on the last word of the line, which rang through the Bus like a metallic punch, booming through the fuselage and echoing through the corridors with a distinctive Glaswegian flair. “When I go out… yeah, I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who goes along with YOU! Come on, Simmons!”

“This is a disaster,” Coulson lamented.

“I know, those doors are sealed pretty tight,” May added.

“Not just that,” Coulson replied, shrugging somewhat in embarrassment. “He could have picked a better song.”

“Agent Coulson,” Fitz’s voice rang over the intercom. “You’ve insulted my country. There will be no schnitzel for you when we reach Vienna. Now where was I? IF I GET DRUNK--”

***

Skye sat on one of the plush white couches in the lounge, frantically studying the palms of her hands and wiping them on her jeans. They itched terribly, and that made her irritated.

“Hey,” came a voice. She looked up and saw Ward standing before her, a fluffy parka about his shoulders. She snickered.

“You look like a marshmallow,” she laughed. Ward rolled his eyes.

“Funny.” He sat down next to her. “What are you doing?” Skye’s smile instantly faded and her eyebrows drooped lower in annoyance.

“What’s it to you?” Her voice was laced with venom. Ward held up his hands defensively.

“Hey, I was just asking.”

“You don’t rank me!”

“Actually, I do.”

“Well, you’re not Coulson, so just get off my back!”

“Jeez, I was just asking.” He sighed deeply as Skye continued to rub her hands together. “I’m gonna go check our equipment… see how much time we have before the bad guys get here. Maybe Fitz will stop singing and we can get out of here pretty quickly. You going to be okay?”

“I don’t belong here,” Skye said suddenly, staring straightforward with hazy eyes. Her mind was numb, and she didn’t even acknowledge Ward as he leaned in closer to her.

“What do you mean, Skye?”

“What are we doing here, anyways?”

“The Bus broke down.”

“No, what is SHIELD doing? Investigating strange foreign objects. Keeping secrets from everyone. Do we really do good, Ward?”

“Hey, of course we do,” he replied, placing a hand on Skye’s. He gripped it tight as he watched her stare into space. “Of course we do good.”

“I’m not so sure,” Skye continued, still avoiding his gaze. “We’ve got no business keeping secrets from the world. Aliens invade New York and SHIELD just takes care of it like it’s nothing… but at what cost? Maybe they’ll come back. Maybe we’ve just made them angry and they’re going to return with an even bigger army and the Avengers won’t be able to protect us.” She suddenly looked at him. “How do we defend ourselves? Shouldn’t we have that chance? How do people protect themselves if SHIELD won’t tell them what they know?”

“Skye-”

“I don’t belong here. I’m one of THEM.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to be an amazing SHIELD agent. You’re doing good just by being here with Coulson. With me. You’ve helped more people by being here than you ever have as a hacktivist.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Whatever you mean,” he squeezed her hand tighter, “I’m glad you’re here. We need you.”

“Yeah, right,” she grumbled, unceremoniously freeing her hand from Ward’s. “I’m going to go lay down.” She rose to leave, turning away from Ward and withholding a goodbye as she stomped indignantly towards her bunk.

Ward felt a tingling sensation on the palms of his hands.


	4. Part 4

“I’m gonna be the man who’s comin’ hooooome… with you! And I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more--” 

“This isn’t funny, Agent Fitz!” Coulson was using his Serious Top Agent Voice-- the voice which implied that court martials were in the offing, the voice which (although his team did not know it) he used on Tony Stark. It was having no effect.

“--the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door! DADA DA DA!”

“There is a time and a place for practical jokes, and this is not it!” Coulson tried shouting through the cockpit door again. 

“Not joking! Why does everyone always think I’m joking? Stop interrupting; you’re ruining the effect of the song! Dada dum dada dum dada dum dada da da dum!”

The plane rocked as the engine revved again, and the three agents gathered outside the cockpit swayed on their feet and exchanged nervous glances.

“Whoops,” said Fitz’s voice, still over the intercom. “Apologies, passengers. We will be underway shortly. Where was I?”

“Fitz!” Simmons stepped forward and pounded on the door. “What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m saving you! I’m saving all our lives, if you must know!” He broke into song again. “‘Cause I would walk five hundred miles--” 

“Do you even realize how insane you’re sounding?! You’re going to get us all killed!”

“I’d never do that! And I would walk five hundred more just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your dooooooor!”

There was a silent pause in which they allowed themselves to breathe a sigh of relief. Then the intercom crackled and Fitz started up again. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your heroic captain speaking. I apologize for the delay. Just give me a wee bit more time to figure out these controls and we will be out of this snowy wasteland crawling with unethical scientists. In the meantime, I give you another performance of The Proclaimers’ hit, ‘I’m Gonna Be Parenthesis Five Hundred Miles Close Parenthesis.’ This one is dedicated to Agent Jemma Simmons, who I hope to hear joining in on the chorus this time, just like at karaoke. Ready? One! More! Time! When I wake up--”

May put her hand on Simmons’s shoulder. “I know you want to reason with him, but he’s not being reasonable.”

“Go get what you need from the lab to get this door open,” Coulson said. “That’s an order. ‘Cause if he uses up the power supply or, God forbid, actually takes off, we’re all dead.”

Simmons nodded and ran back to the lab, where Fitz’s voice was still blaring overhead. Her mind was reeling. She knew Fitz, or thought she did, but she’d never have imagined him doing something like this. It didn’t make any sense! She knew that he’d felt like he hadn’t done enough when she’d jumped out of the plane, that he’d felt he should be the brasher type of hero Ward was, but this was… May was right, he wasn’t being reasonable. 

Simmons frantically tore through her supplies, pulling chemical samples which might contribute to making a small, controlled blast.

Fitz wasn’t being reasonable, and that meant something was wrong. Very wrong. In all the time she’d known him, Fitz had followed reason and logic, except when it came to dissections and pet monkeys. Now, all of that was gone, stripped away. It was as though something had made him irrational… or he’d been… drugged…

Something clicked in Simmons’s mind. She rushed to finish gathering what she needed when, in one of the cabinets, she stumbled across the blowtorch. In spite of everything, she smiled. “Oh! Perfect.”

She ran back the length of the plane, clutching the blowtorch and her safety goggles, past Ward in the lounge with his hands over his ears and a look of exasperation on his face, until she reached Coulson and May exactly where she’d left them.

Coulson was shouting to be heard over Fitz’s song, “I don’t know why you’re sabotaging the plane, but--”

“Agent Coulson, I am shocked,” Fitz replied. “Why the hell would I sabotage the plane? I’m just trying to--” 

“I know, Fitz,” Simmons shouted through the door. “I know, you’re just trying to help.”

“Thank you! I knew you’d understand, Jemma. That’s why… I would walk five hundred--”

Coulson turned to her, incredulous. “What?”

“He’s not sabotaging the plane. Well, not on purpose. Sir, I think it’s the 0-8-4. It’s affecting him, just like Hand’s agent, I’m sure of it.”

“But Hand’s agent committed suicide. Fitz does not exactly seem depressed.”

“No, but think of all the people at the original site. They all lost control, lost all their inhibitions. It fits the pattern.” Simmons turned to May and explained, “The people at the 0-8-4 site all died within a short period of time from a variety of reckless behaviors. Right after Agent Hand’s team confirmed that the 0-8-4 was alien, one of her people exhibited signs of following the same pattern. And now Fitz--”

“He wants to be the hero,” May nodded, arms folded over her chest. “And now nothing’s holding him back.”

“Exactly. And, sir,” she turned back to Coulson, “we don’t know how this-- this virus or mind control or drug or whatever it is-- is spreading. We were all at the site. It could only be a matter of time before…” She glanced over at the door, behind which Fitz was loudly and musically proclaiming that, when he was lonely, he would be the man who was lonely without someone in particular.

“Oh, God,” Coulson groaned. “All right, we need to--” 

Abruptly, Coulson was interrupted, not by noise, but by its sudden cessation as the intercom projecting Fitz’s voice throughout the plane shut off. Through the cockpit door, they could still hear him:

“I’m gonna dream, I’m gonna dream about-- wait. What the hell?! Who shut that off? That’s-- _that’s_ an act of sabotage, right there, I’ll have you hauled off to the Fridge, whoever did that, once we get to Vienna--”

“Skye must have hacked it,” May speculated, allowing herself a small smile.

But Simmons’s face fell. “Skye,” she murmured. “Skye touched one of the bodies, and earlier she was complaining about a strange sensation in her hands, and her behavior was-- was slightly erratic. If this is spread by physical contact, Skye could already be…”

“I’ll check on her,” Coulson said. “You work on getting that door open. I’m sorry, Agent Simmons, but this is on you again. Fitz is most likely to respond positively to you, but if he doesn’t, use whatever means you have to contain this thing and find a solution.”

Simmons nodded, and Coulson set off in search of Skye. She rapped lightly on the door. “Fitz? I know you’re trying to help, but I… um… I could use your help in the lab.”

There was a pause. “What is it?” Fitz’s voice called from the other side of the door.

“Something very important!”

“Simmons, whatever it is, it can wait until after we get out of here.” 

Simmons gave May a helpless look. May sighed. “You need to act like you’re in danger. He’ll only respond if he gets to do something more heroic than flying the plane.”

“Oh…” Simmons bit her lip, then hesitantly raised her voice. “Oh! Oh no! Help! Fitz! There’s an… emergency!”

“What sort of emergency?”

“A… dangerous one! There’s… things are on fire! Just… flames everywhere! It’s terrible! Please come out? Right now!” She looked back at May. “Was that convincing? I think it’s the best I can do.” May rolled her eyes.

“Okay, I heard that,” Fitz responded. “It’s very flattering that you’re concerned about me, but really, I’ve got this under control.” The engine revved again, and from her position near the door, Simmons could hear Fitz mutter, “Bugger.”

“Blowtorch,” May said flatly.

“Right. Okay.” Simmons donned her safety glasses.

***

Coulson found Skye in her bunk, hunkered down over her laptop. Her head snapped up as he opened the door, and she glared. 

“Don’t you knock? Oh, I forgot, other people’s privacy isn’t exactly the watchword of SHIELD.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“You mean am I about to sprout a tail? Maybe some claws? Not that I’m aware of, but who the hell knows?”

He decided to try a different tactic. “Did you shut off the intercom?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Can you blame me? I hacked the whole Bus, actually. Monkey Boy out there can’t unlock the control systems to take off.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Skye snapped. “I don’t particularly want to die in a fiery crash, and also, I really don’t like that song and don’t want to hear it on repeat.”

“Okay… Skye, I was talking to--”

“You want to know what else I did?” She gazed at him steadily over the top of her computer.

Coulson frowned. “What did you do?”

“I told you I hacked the whole Bus, right? That means everything. _Everything._ All our intel, everything from our missions… and the passwords to get into everything they’ve got at SHIELD HQ, which you were keeping in an Excel spreadsheet on the computer in your office, because that’s the kind of guy you are. And you know what else? I’ve set it to upload to the internet within five minutes of when May takes off-- which she has to do, right, if we don’t want to get murdered or freeze to death out here. It’s all set up, it’s all encrypted, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.” She sat back. “So what do you think of that, _sir_? No more secrets. Everything SHIELD has been trying to keep the public from knowing, out in the open. You want to try and stop me? Go ahead.”

Coulson’s mouth had fallen open. He closed it. “Why are you doing that?”

“The public deserves to know. The people of the world should be able to defend themselves without having to take their chances that SHIELD or the Avengers will show up in time.”

“No, Skye, let me tell you why you’re doing it. You’re under the influence of something alien. This isn’t you.”

Skye laughed. “But it is, right? Jesus, how much more alien can I get?”

“Skye…”

“Go ahead! Go ahead, say it! I’m dangerous! I’m an ‘object of unknown origin,’ I’m a liability in the field-- hell, I’m minutes away from bringing down your whole organization! So kick me off the team! I’ve given you the perfect reason, so just do it!” Skye stood up, toe to toe with Coulson. “Drop me off, lock me up, whatever. You want to get rid of me, so do it!”

“I don’t want to get rid of you, Skye.”

“You liar!” She broke eye contact and ran a hand through her hair. “You do. Everybody does. I don’t know why you’re even bothering to pretend otherwise. I know none of you want me here, I know I don’t belong-- on this planet, let alone this plane. I know, okay? So send me back!”

“Send you back where, Skye?” Coulson asked gently.

***

Outside the cockpit door, Simmons was doing her best with the blowtorch and Fitz, despite the lack of intercom, was giving his rendition of “I’m Gonna Be,” in his words, “one more time.”

“Can you go any faster?” May asked through gritted teeth.

“I’m doing my best,” Simmons answered. “This door is actually designed to be resistant to this type of assault, so…”

“DADA DA DA!” Fitz sang.

“Dada da da,” Simmons absentmindedly echoed.

“DADA DA DA!”

“Dada da da. Dum dada dum-- Oh, hello, Ward.” Footsteps behind her had alerted her to the agent’s presence. But he did not return her friendly smile. Before she could react, Ward snatched the blowtorch from her hands, switched it off, and swung the blunt, heavy end at May’s head.

Simmons screamed.


	5. Part 5

May ducked as the blowtorch swung over her head and clashed into the wall, leaving a large crater in the paneling.

“Ward, what are you doing?” May said, her voice well-controlled and even, despite the rush of panic that thickened the air around them. Ward gritted his teeth and swung the torch again, but May blocked him and expertly pushed him out of the cramped hallway, away from the cockpit.

“May!” Simmons yelled. The agent kicked the torch from Ward’s hand and landed a punch to his face. He grunted and drove a fist into May’s side.

“Simmons?” came Fitz’s voice from the cockpit. “What’s going on?”

Simmons bit her lip. “Ward just started attacking May. They’re fighting in the lounge.” She felt her blood rise to her face. “Fitz, what are we going to do?”

Suddenly, the door swung open, creaking lightly on its hinges. “Never fear!” Fitz proclaimed, puffing his chest out and squaring his jaw. “I will diffuse the situation! I have excellent negotiating skills. Ward and I are like brothers, you know.” He made a move to sweep past her, and Simmons had to flatten herself against the wall to avoid touching him. _We still don’t know what’s affecting his behavior. Best to avoid contact, just in case… But what if he gets entangled in their fighting? He’s so… delicate! He has no combat training! He’ll get killed!_

“No, Fitz,” Simmons pleaded. “Come on. Why don’t we just… go down to the lab?”

“Our team cannot stand if we are divided,” Fitz replied, striding confidently towards the lounge. Simmons carefully tip toed after him, cringing as she heard a loud crack echoing in the next room. _Someone must have broken something… but a table or a bone, I don’t quite know._

Making a grand entrance, Fitz reached out towards May and Ward, the two fully engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Ward’s lip was trickling with blood and May’s face glistened with sweat, and the pair of them circled each other in an elegant dance. Simmons could almost find their fighting stunning if it weren’t so threatening to their survival.

“I’ll save you, fair maiden!” Fitz announced, launching himself into the fray. Simmons clasped her hands together and felt her pulse quicken.

“Sorry, neither,” May said, her voice flat. She tried to push him away, but Fitz kept trying to maneuver himself between the two agents, using his body as a barrier between them.

“Get out of here,” Ward said, his voice rough and dark. “Run and play with your toys and your gadgets.” _Yes,_ Simmons thought, _get him to the lab._ But Fitz showed no sign of backing down. His face betrayed an ounce of hurt at Ward’s words, but remarkably, he seemed to keep himself focused on the task at hand.

“Come on, Ward,” he pleaded. “Cut it out. We need to get out of here, and we need to work together.” He turned to May behind him. “And you, stop hitting my friend. It isn’t nice.” May rolled her eyes.

“He hit me first,” she muttered. Fitz grabbed hold of Ward’s arm.

“Why are you fighting her, anyways? I thought you two were, like, fellow fancy SHIELD black ops buddies.” Simmons nodded. She had been thinking the same thing herself. Ward easily flung Fitz’s hand aside.

“She’s a threat,” he said, his lower jaw pushed out. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, making a ring of perspiration around his head. One of them, Simmons saw, was beginning to make a trail down the side of his face.

Fitz held a hand out in front of him, as if to make a wider shield between Ward and May. “She’s one of us,” he protested. Ward tilted his head.

“And who is ‘us?’” he asked cryptically, drawing his arm back for another punch. Simmons felt adrenaline race through her veins as she watched Ward’s hand shoot across Fitz’s cheek lightning-fast, causing the scientist to crumple to the ground unconscious. Breathing out through his nose, Ward stepped over the body and once again focused his attention on Agent May.

As the two agents continued to fight one another, Simmons carefully kneeled next to Fitz’s motionless frame, using extra caution to avoid contact. “Lovely,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm. “How am I going to get him down to the lab now?”

***

Coulson and Skye entered the lounge and were greeted by the sight of Ward throwing May violently against the bar. She let out a loud cry, but rebounded immediately by grabbing a bottle of scotch and swinging it at Ward’s head. Coulson winced as it made contact with Ward’s shoulder instead, shattering the glass and spilling the amber liquid all over the floor. The smell seeped into the carpet and filled the cabin with an intoxicating scent.

“Damn,” Coulson said, “That was really good scotch.” Skye giggled in amusement as Ward landed a kick to the remains of the broken bottle in May’s hand, shattering it further until it was no use as a weapon.

Coulson looked around to see Simmons hunkered down over Fitz’s unconscious body. _At least he’s out of the cockpit,_ he thought. Turning to Skye, he looked directly into her eyes, trying to communicate the gravity of the situation and pierce through her hazy, irrational state.

“Listen,” he said, “I need to stop May and Ward from seriously injuring each other. Go over there and help Simmons.” Skye nodded and gave him a mock salute.

“Yes sir,” she said, punctuating each word with verbal force. Coulson sighed and left her, heading straight for his black ops agents, who were now making a mess of the plush couches. Even if he risked being exposed to whatever it was that was influencing his team, he had to stop them from tearing each other apart.

May grunted as she swung at Ward again, landing a perfect blow to his bicep between two major muscle groups, which made him grasp on to the back of the couch for support. Ward cried out in pain, but lowered his eyebrows and gritted his teeth, intent to pay her back. Suddenly, Coulson stepped between them and held his hands out, ready to block should Ward choose to attack again.

“Ward, May,” he said. “Stop this right now.”

“Coulson,” Ward sneered. “You. You were dead.” Coulson cocked his head in confusion.

“Yes?”

Ward licked the blood from his lips. “How did you do it? You must know.”

“Whatever is influencing Fitz may also be working on Ward,” May interrupted, stepping closer to Coulson. “He attacked me unprovoked in the hallway while we were trying to get Fitz out.”

Coulson nodded. _But you’ve touched him,_ he thought. _You could be affected now, too._ He decided to stay silent and address Ward directly. “Ward,” he said, his voice softening, “we need to get you to the lab. Something’s affecting you and we need to put an end to it.”

Ward shook his head. “I’m not going down there with those test tube-toting children.”

“They can help.”

“We can’t reason with him,” May interjected. Coulson nodded again in agreement.

“Ward,” he continued, “you need to stop this right now or we’ll have to restrain you.” Ward snickered.

“I’d like to see you try. You, Fury’s favorite suit. What does it say that SHIELD has to rely on a man of your age to keep their organization up and running?”

Coulson made a face. “Man of my age?” he said, preparing to launch an assault. “That’s something you say to an old person.” May caught him the the crook of the elbow, making sure to avoid skin contact.

“Let me subdue him,” she said. “I’ve already touched him anyway. But if you catch whatever it is that’s on this Bus, we won’t last much longer.” Coulson looked at her, his eyes filled with gratitude. May nodded, confident that she’d be able to overpower their teammate, but also accepting the chances that she’d come away unscathed were very low.

“I still need you to drive the Bus,” Coulson said. May looked at him with determination.

“Then get Simmons to fix this and fast.”

***

Skye poked Fitz’s ribs with her foot. “Is he okay?” she asked. Simmons looked up at her in surprise. _I can’t let her touch me,_ she thought. She stood up quickly, but had trouble looking at Skye in the eyes.

“Um, he should be,” she stammered. “He’s just unconscious.”

“Better than that Scottish sing-a-long he was playing on repeat.” Simmons made a face at her that was a mixture of reproach and guilt for thinking the same thing.

“I need to get him to the lab,” she announced. Skye looked over to Coulson, who was working with May to overpower Ward.

“Um, okay,” she said, turning back to Simmons. “We could carry him. You grab his feet and I’ll get his arms.”

“I can’t touch him,” Simmons replied. “He’s under the influence of some energy field or virus or god knows what from that 0-8-4.” She suddenly looked up to Skye. “As are you.”

“What, are you too good to be tactile with us?”

Simmons’ face was pained and she sighed. “No,” she said. “It’s just that… if we’re going to get out of here all right, I need to figure out what’s affecting everyone, and I can’t do that if I’m also subject to it.”

Skye nodded. “Right. So.” She crouched down and grabbed hold of Fitz’s ankles. “To the lab!” She began to drag Fitz’s body unceremoniously across the floor. Simmons almost wanted to laugh at the sight of his curly brown hair rubbing against the carpet, his arms stretched out above his head as Skye pulled him like a horse pulling a cart.

“Be careful!” Simmons cautioned. Skye rolled her eyes and continued to steer around the various furnishings, careful to distance themselves from the fight that was slowly dying in the lounge.

But as soon as they reached the stairs, Simmons had to cry out for them to stop.

“Skye, wait!” she yelled. “You can’t drag him down the stairs! His head will bang against the steps!”

“He’s already unconscious. I don’t think a little head-smacking will make much difference.”

“It could give him a basilar skull fracture or a cerebral contusion or-”

“Simmons, I don’t speak science!”

They heard a loud _crack_ as May pushed Grant Ward onto a side table, causing it to buckle under his weight and send splinters flying through the air.

“Forget it, this place is a freaking war zone!” Skye yelled, making to drag Fitz down the stairs despite Simmons’ protests.

***

When Ward went down, May and Coulson moved quickly to pin him to the floor while he was still dazed, disregarding any splinters that may have been digging into the agent’s back from the side table they had just destroyed. _Fury’s not gonna like this,_ Coulson thought. He carefully avoided touching either of them, using his knee to drive into Ward’s abdomen as May grabbed hold of both of his hands. Coulson reached to his belt and pulled out a pair of high-tech restraining cuffs. May looked at him in surprise.

“I grabbed them for Fitz while I was looking for Skye,” he admitted. He handed them over to May, who clamped them around Ward’s wrists. Once secured, they magnetized to one another, restricting Ward’s ability to move. May moved around to hold him down with her weight and a hand on his neck, allowing Coulson to stand.

“He can still cause a lot of damage with just his hands restrained,” she said. Ward smiled, the kind that was unfriendly and knowing, so Coulson nodded at May, sending a silent signal that licensed her to do whatever she thought best.

Ward sneered, “The second you release one ounce of pressure is the moment I-”

May exhaled through her nose and landed a punch to Ward’s face, knocking him unconscious.

“Put him in the interrogation chamber,” Coulson instructed, rising to his feet. “Then help Skye carry Fitz down to the lab. The sooner Simmons starts working on this, the better.” He glanced at his watch. “Only 60 minutes until the Russians arrive. I want to be out of this snowbank well before then.”

As he walked away, May began to feel her palms itch.


	6. Part 6

“Wow,” Skye marveled as May stood, rubbing her hands together, over Ward’s prostrate form. She had let go of Fitz at the top of the stairs when it became clear that the fight was all over but for the final blow rendering Ward unconscious. “That was intense. Not gonna miss that when I’m gone.”

Simmons had gingerly grabbed Fitz by the shoes and was dragging his head clear of the stairwell. She looked up, surprised. “What?”

“What?”

“You’re leaving the team?” Simmons’ eyebrows knit in concern.

Skye scoffed. “Not much of a team, is it?”

Before Simmons could respond, May approached them. “All right, let’s get moving. We don’t have much time. Either Fitz or Ward could wake up any moment, Simmons can’t touch either of them, and I… don’t know how long I’ll be useful.”

“How quickly can you get Agent Ward into the interrogation room?” Simmons asked nervously.

May shrugged. “Not sure.”

“You could just tie him up in here,” Skye suggested. “That’d be faster and we wouldn’t have to leave Monkey Boy unsupervised.” May and Simmons turned to her to see her slouched against the wall, playing games on her phone. “What?”

May’s lips quirked into a half-smile. “I like that idea.”

May and Skye watched over the unconscious men while Simmons ran down to the lab to get a rope and gloves. She wondered briefly why Coulson hadn’t stayed around to help, but she supposed he was trying to keep himself in the clear so he could stay in control of the Bus for as long as possible.

***  
In fact, Coulson was trying his hand at hacking. Specifically, he was in Skye’s sparsely decorated bunk, trying to get into her laptop and stop the information upload she had arranged. With two agents unconscious and only one aside from himself now unaffected by the 0-8-4-- and that was _if_ they were right about it being spread by physical contact-- this was really the least of their worries, but he figured he’d give it a try. After all, as the leader of this team, he had to look at the big picture. If the worst happened and Fury had to arrange a salvage operation for the Bus, or if Department X got ahold of Skye’s laptop and got it within wifi range, he didn’t want a large intel leak taking SHIELD unawares and compromising the whole organization.

Unfortunately, he was not the person ideally suited for this task and was currently having trouble getting past the login screen. 

“Password…” he muttered to himself. “What… would be… Skye’s password?” He carefully wiped off the keyboard with the edge of Skye’s comforter, just in case, and tried typing, “Skye.” That did not work. Neither did “van” or “hacker” or “battleship” or “ironman” or “thor” or even “password.” He made a mental note to learn more about Skye’s interests.

Optimistically, he tried “Coulson.”

No.

What was that thing people supposedly always used as their passwords? “Swordfish?”

It was not “swordfish.”

Giving up for the time being, Coulson re-entered the lounge to find Skye and May nearly finished tying Ward to a chair and Simmons standing, gloved, in the center of the room, one Night-Night pistol in each hand. The one in her left hand was aimed at Fitz, still sprawled out on the floor, the one in her right at Ward.

“Hello, sir,” she greeted Coulson.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What happened to putting Ward in the interrogation room?”

“There were some logistical difficulties,” Simmons replied. 

Skye looked up. “Is that my laptop?” She snatched the computer out of Coulson’s hands. “That’s mine! What were you trying to do, break it so you could stop the upload?”

“Maybe,” Coulson said, wishing he had thought of that. 

“Upload?” Simmons looked at them and tilted her head to the side. “What upload?” 

Coulson waved a hand and smiled sheepishly. “Nothing important. Just… stuff.”

“Yeah, sure ‘stuff.’ SHIELD’s stuff. All of it,” Skye scoffed. “I’m uploading all of SHIELD’s secrets to the internet as soon as we take off, so…” She shrugged. 

Simmons’s mouth dropped open and she looked to Coulson, who said, “But that’s not what you need to focus on right now. Your job is to find out what’s causing this and how to stop it.”

His attention was distracted by a choking noise, and he turned his head to see May, crouched in front of Ward, shaking her head furiously.

“Agent May?” Simmons asked tentatively. “Are you all right?”

Coulson went to her. “May. Melinda. What’s going on?” Maybe the 0-8-4 was affecting her differently than it had everyone else for some reason. Maybe it was _killing_ her, or--

May looked up at him and burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried to fight it, Phil, but…” she looked back at Ward. “He just looks so ridiculous!”

Coulson let out a sigh of relief. Simmons and Skye were staring at May as though she had grown an extra head. “Well,” he said, “she’s not wrong.”

“She’s giggling,” Skye pointed out. Coulson shrugged. “Ugh, you guys are so weird.”

“Yes. Well. All right.” Simmons attempted to regain control of the situation. “Ward and Fitz may wake up any moment, so, Agent Coulson, would you please train this pistol,” she handed him one of the Night-Night guns, “on Ward, and Skye and May, if you would just help me get Fitz down to the lab--”

“Yeah, no, I’m not doing that,” Skye replied.

May started giggling again.

Simmons was the picture of dismay. “What? But you’ve been so helpful! Aside from the whole uploading-all-our-secrets thing. You’ve been at least relatively helpful, you know, considering.” 

“Considering what? That I’m an alien freakshow or that I’m just incompetent?”

“No, Skye, _you’re_ not an alien, you’re just being _affected_ by--” 

“Skye,” Coulson interrupted. “You are an integral part of this team. We need you. Please help carry Fitz down to the lab. You were perfectly willing to help before.”

“Before there was a real-life game of Mortal Kombat going on in here. I mean,” she appeared to stumble over her own words for a moment, “it’s not like I cared if you guys got trampled or anything, just... I was on my way out anyway.”

From the floor came the sound of Fitz groaning. He stirred. “What… the hell? Did Ward… punch me in the face?”

Simmons winced. “Oh, Fitz. I’m really, really sorry about this.” She caught him neatly in the shoulder with a round from the Night-Night pistol and he fell back again. “Ergh. You don’t think he’ll remember that when he wakes up, do you?”

When she looked back at the rest of the team, she found Coulson looking a bit stunned, Skye impressed, and May delighted

“Oh my God,” May grinned. “Babies shooting babies. This is the best 0-8-4 we’ve ever found.” She looked, Simmons thought, somehow younger, like the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders all at once. In its own way, the effect was just as unnerving as Ward going on the attack against his own teammates. Her giggle was disturbingly cute.

“Okay, Skye. Come on.” Simmons waved the Night-Night pistol in the hacker’s general direction. 

Skye folded her arms. “No. I’m not a part of this team, so you can’t tell me what to do, and I’m not leaving my laptop unsupervised around any of you anymore, so… if you wanna knock me out… you’ll have to hit a moving target!” Abruptly, she darted down the steps two at a time, clutching her laptop to her chest.

“It’s okay, Simmons,” Coulson said, signalling her to lower her pistol. She did so gratefully. “We need her conscious as soon as you figure out how to get everybody back to normal so she can see to the upload.”

“But sir, I can’t do that if I can’t get samples from one of the affected people. We can’t get Fitz down to the lab, Ward is too dangerous, I doubt Skye would cooperate, and May--” 

“Can help,” the latter said lightly. “But-- hold on one sec.” She bent forward and tied Ward’s shoelaces together. “Perfect. Okay.” With that, May walked over to Fitz, pulled him into a sitting position, levered him over her shoulder, picked him up, and walked toward the stairs. “To the lab!”

The two remaining conscious agents stared after her. 

“That works,” said Simmons.

“I’ll stay here and guard Ward. You get to work. Let me know if there’s any trouble with the others.”

“And… how will I let you know?” 

“Yell really loudly? We have--” Coulson checked his watch, “45 minutes.”


	7. Part 7

Something told Simmons to have her Night-Night gun at the ready, so when May finally laid Fitz’s body down on the table in the lab, she was sure to have her dendrotoxin rounds within reach at all times. _No telling what could happen,_ Simmons thought. She looked to May and nodded in thanks, sending the usually reserved agent walking with a bounce in her step.

As she began to work - grabbing unopened solutions and the few surviving test tubes from various shelves, booting up the computerized data sorting interface with the precious little power that was left on the plane - Simmons found her hands beginning to shake again. _Oh god,_ she thought, her heart pounding hurriedly with adrenaline. _Am I...?_ But the thought died away almost as quickly as it had come. Nerves. She hadn’t been so pressured since Skye was shot, when her teammate’s survival depended solely on her actions. But now - now the stakes were even higher. _Solve this, Jemma,_ her inner voice demanded of her. _Solve this or your whole team will die._

She wished Fitz were unaffected. If it was just her and him, together, sound of mind, she might be able to handle the pressure better. He understood her: how she liked to move around as she worked, how she always felt the need to do everything precisely by the book. He even understood her habit of concealing her true emotions, how she refused to show anyone when she cracked under pressure. He grounded her, held her when she needed to be held, stopped the anxiety when she felt it clawing with its burning fingers, silently up her neck. But now, she couldn’t even touch him.

She bit her lip as Fitz stirred in his sleep, making soft groaning noises and turning his head ever so slightly. Steadying her hands, she slipped a needle beneath his skin, watching as it drew ruby red blood from the vein of his arm. Seeing it stilled the storm inside her, and with a deep breath, she began to feel a renewed sense of hope. You can still help me, she thought. _You can give me the tissue samples that I need to fix this._ Suddenly, she didn’t feel as if she were working alone anymore.

Her work was interrupted by a loud _pop._

Simmons’ head snapped up so suddenly that she almost dropped her syringe. Peering through the windows of the lab doors, she saw a large, dull blue glow lighting up the cargo hold. She tiptoed closer to get a better look.

“You can serve first!” she heard Skye shout. May stretched out her body and made a perfect sweeping motion with her arm, sending a ball of light zooming away from her - or at least, that was how it seemed.

“Damn,” Simmons swore under her breath. “They’ve found the holotable racquetball program.” The two agents had booted up the echo chamber, and its towering silver poles were creating vivid holograms resembling a racquetball court, complete with rackets that could be manipulated by the players. _Coulson is going to murder me,_ Simmons thought.

“How did you know this was here?” she asked. Skye swung her arm towards the oncoming ball but sent it back sloppily.

“Oh, you know. Just poking about in the bus’s mainframe. Decided it would be more fun to reroute the software from the holotable to the echo chamber.”

_Why didn’t we think of that?_ Simmons thought, disappointed in herself.

May giggled and completed another perfect hit. “You decided right.”

“Hey, Simmons!” Skye yelled. “Why didn’t you tell us about this thing? Imagine all those boring flights we could have filled!” May twirled the holographic racket in her hand. She seemed to be enjoying herself by the way she bounced on her toes.

“You weren’t supposed to find out about that!” Simmons replied, her voice too quiet to be heard through the glass. Briefly, she remembered her and Fitz messing around with the program on the lab table, the way his eyes lit up when he finally figured out how to program the games and how they stacked up points with each victory. Simmons wanted to solve this problem so she could see that light in his eyes again.

Skye hit the holographic ball, which “bounced” off the wall of the cargo hold and came racing back to May. Simmons made a mental note to have Fitz delete the program later. _All our high scores,_ she lamented as she turned back to her work.

***

Coulson sat on the couch in the lounge, his hands folded and wrists resting on his knees. Ward sat tied to the chair, though Coulson was unsure of how well that would hold if the agent should wake up. He kept a dendrotoxin pistol on the cushion beside him just in case.

_What is happening to my team?_

He tried to sift through all the data in his mind. What did he know about what was happening? What did he know about the 0-8-4? The scene? Hand’s men? _Not much without my files, and I’m not about to leave Ward alone to make a trip to my office._ He would just have to make do with what he remembered.

The more he thought, the lower his head seemed to dip until his fingers rose from his knees and his forehead lay gently pressed into his knuckles. Everyone - save Simmons - was acting irrationally. Fitz was trying to fly the plane. Skye was lashing out at people. Ward was attacking everyone. And May…

The pieces lay spread out before him like a puzzle, but the more Coulson tried to piece them together, the more he felt like he was trying to assemble an image without knowing what the bigger picture was supposed to be. There were a thousand tiny pieces, all edges and corners and interlocking bits, and he didn’t know if they were supposed to show their salvation or their ruin.

He just wanted everything to be over. A weight sank uneasily in the pit of his stomach as he remembered the oncoming Russians, too close for comfort. Would Simmons be able to revive Fitz in time to fix the power on the plane? Would May be capable of flying it? How long until they all just gave up on living… or would the Russians take them first? Coulson shivered at the thought. No, he thought, willing himself to be optimistic. _Simmons will figure it out. She’s a reliable agent._

He wondered if she was hiding anything from him, any cracks in her usually pristine veneer. After all the difficult assignments they’d had, the seemingly impossible tasks, the countless injuries and after staring death full in the face, Simmons never buckled, never gave way, and always pulled through. She was amazingly resilient. _But was she really?_ Coulson found himself curious as to whether or not Simmons ever let her work affect her mood. _Of course it does. It must._ But he never remembered any time she’d cried from frustration or fear or stress. She just didn’t get that way. _Or maybe she does, she just represses it… like a good agent should._

A good agent.

_May is a good agent,_ he thought suddenly, his brain feeling like it had been illuminated by a hundred light bulbs. _She stays focused because she represses her emotions._ Coulson cautiously rose from the couch, grabbing the dendrotoxin pistol as he moved, and crept past the sleeping body of Grant Ward. He intended to step out just for a moment, but his unease overcame him, so he landed a shot in Ward’s leg for good measure.

After settling the pistol in a holster at his side, he left the lounge and silently made his way to the overhang that looked down on the cargo hold. Peering carefully out of the doorway, he looked into the vast, open space and saw Skye and May playing what looked like air hockey with the echo chamber. A holographic puck slid past Skye’s goal, causing the tracker to increase the number or points for “blue player.”

“Come on, this is like the zillionth goal you’ve gotten in a row,” Skye complained. May jumped slightly for joy and gave her a wide smile.

“You’ve got to practice your reflexes,” she replied, which would have sounded business-like except for the light airiness in her voice. Though not unpleasant to hear, it did cause Coulson’s stomach to flip in worry. “Come on, let’s go again! I love this game!”

May was showing emotion.

The revelation gave him a high, like he had suddenly awoken from a deep sleep and he was able to see the world for the first time in ages. _This thing - whatever it is - it brings out what we repress._ That would explain May’s actions and why Skye was so intent on revealing the truth while doubting her own acceptance as a member of the team. It would even explain Fitz’s attempts at heroics. But Ward…? Perhaps he was just all special ops all the time. That had to be it. He was always looking to neutralize a threat. _He has difficulty working in a team. That’s why I picked him up. He probably just has trouble seeing us as anything but a threat to his own survival._

Coulson had to tell Simmons what he’d discovered. It could help her in her research.

His feet made a soft _tink tink tink_ as he scurried down the spiral staircase to the lab.

“Agent Simmons!” he called, his hand sliding down the rail beside him. “I know what it does!”

There was a loud grunt as Skye shot the holographic puck towards May, who dove sharply to one side and ran full-on into Coulson, brushing his skin with her hand.

“Oh, sorry, Phil,” she said as Coulson gripped her clumsily by the arms to steady her. She brushed a hair from her face and laughed.

But Coulson did not look at her. Instead, he just stared at his hands, knowing what had just occurred.

“May,” he whispered, his voice barely audible, “what have you done?”


	8. Part 8

“I said ‘sorry.’ Loosen up, Phil,” May shrugged, and returned to her holographic game.

Coulson clenched his hands into fists. Already he thought they felt strange, as though being pricked with thousands of miniscule needles. He looked up at Simmons, who was staring at him, openly horrified. 

“Agent Coulson?” Her voice was tiny.

He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Agent Simmons.” He wanted to sound as professional as possible to bolster her confidence in the face of the responsibility about to be dropped on her shoulders. Both of them knew she was about to be the last person on the Bus in control of her own actions. “Listen to me, while we still have time.” She nodded. His palms were slick with sweat, and he felt uncomfortably hot. “This thing, I’ve figured out what it’s doing.”

“But we already know that,” Simmons said gently. “It’s acting like a drug or an intoxicant, it’s making people drop their inhibitions and behave irrationally.”

Coulson shook his head, feeling sweat bead on his brow as he did so. “No, it’s more than that. It’s deeper. Intoxicated people generally follow certain sets of behaviors.”

“Whereas everyone on our team is reacting to it differently,” Simmons completed.

“Right. We were close when you realized that Fitz was trying to play the hero, but I didn’t put it together until I realized that May… May isn’t just being silly. She’s being herself. She’s acting like she used to, before… before she was the Cavalry. This thing is bringing out who people really, fundamentally are-- the parts of themselves they repress or keep in check day-to-day.” The tingling sensation was moving up his arms; he started speaking more rapidly, trying to get it all out. “Skye is lashing out like kid afraid of rejection-- she’s daring us to send her away. She said, ‘don’t send me back.’ I think she was thinking of the orphanage she came from.”

“Shut up!” Skye’s voice cut across the lab. Coulson hadn’t even realized she and May had stopped playing, but now she was glaring at him with tears in her eyes. “Shut up and leave me alone!” She grabbed her laptop off the lab counter and stormed up the stairs. Coulson watched her go, knowing he couldn’t do anything to help her now. _If SHIELD hadn’t moved her around so much as a child, if they’d let her have just one person…_ He felt cold fingers of anger and anxiety winding their way up through his chest, but he forcefully pushed them back down.

“Ward was behaving like he did with the Berserker staff,” Simmons said, continuing Coulson’s train of thought. “Angry, aggressive. He didn’t care who it was directed against.”

“He’s the lone wolf soldier. Everyone is the enemy.” _And who trained him that way? We did._ Where were these thoughts coming from? They didn’t feel like his. _But they are._ He felt lightheaded.

Simmons nodded. “And Fitz was living a fantasy. He wants to be able to save the day. To save all of us.”

“And he’s afraid he can’t. He didn’t want us to see how much it matters to him.” 

“Oh, Fitz.” Simmons reached out as though to lay a hand on Fitz’s hair, but stopped herself just in time. 

And somehow, that was what broke Coulson. He could almost physically feel it-- something inside him snapped, and wave upon wave of feeling rushed up at him, bowled him over and dragged him out to sea. There was fear there, doubt and confusion, but above all there was outrage. Every feeling he’d tried and failed to dismiss since he’d been brought back from the dead hit him all at once, magnified ten, twenty, a hundred times. In the face of that onslaught, he couldn’t feel anything else. And the worst part was that there was no possibility that these feelings were being projected onto him by an alien source; they were all his feelings. He recognized them. 

“I’ve got it,” he choked out, eyes wide. “The disease.”

Simmons’s brow creased in concern. “We don’t actually know if it’s a disease,” she began. “I’ve tested Fitz’s blood, but I just don’t know what I’m looking for. It could be a--” 

“Look at us.” His voice was low. “This team. I love this team. I love the way we work together. Look at what they’ve done to us. To all of us. Look at what they’ve done to you.” 

“Sir? What ‘they?’ It’s just one 0-8-4. I don’t understand. And I’m not even affected yet.” She was trying to placate him. It wouldn’t work.

It wouldn’t work because he couldn’t ignore it anymore. Nothing else seemed to matter as much as his memories of May before Bahrain, his earlier observations about how Simmons never showed how this job affected her. They were taught that was what a “good agent” did. Don’t let emotions get in the way. _Trust the system._

_Why should I?_

“SHIELD…” As he spoke, his voice raised to a crescendo. “I give, it takes. SHIELD gave me my life back, but I can’t live _my_ life, I have to live SHIELD’s.” 

“Sir...”

Simmons’ voice barely registered. He was pacing now. He could feel the tears in his eyes as he pleaded with her to understand. “I knew a beautiful cellist. She doesn’t know I’m alive. She’s not permitted. Neither is Steve. It’s Level 7.”

“Agent Coulson, please try to stay calm. We… we know this spreads by physical contact, that’s pretty definite, since May touched you--”

“All of this time and I still don’t know what they did.”

“So we’re making progress. _I’m_ making progress. Just...” Her words were bright and full of false comfort. They were _not_ making progress. There were never answers with SHIELD, never any reasons given. 

“There’s no Tahiti, no magical place, no beach to walk on… No time for a home, for a family...” He couldn’t look at her. He didn’t want her to see him cry, not when he should be strong for her-- for all of them.

“Sir?” She was scared and confused, and it was his fault. He tried to fight back, tried to block out his emotions, to push them back behind the neat walls in his mind he’d set up to contain them. The effort made him dizzy. He reached out his hand, pleading, gasping for breath.

“Jemma, help…”

She took two steps back, away from his outstretched hand. “Please-- stay back, sir. I’ll fix this, I promise. If it’s transmitted that quickly through simple touch, the way May touched you, it must enter the bloodstream through the skin somehow. There _must_ be traces of it there. I’ll look again.”

“I’ve got to hang on.” But he felt himself slipping, losing control. He had to get away from Simmons before he infected her the way May had infected him. “Find the cure. Take care of everybody else first, get the plane back in the air. Hurry.”

Coulson staggered for the stairs, the world around him tilting as though he were drunk, so that when he made it up to the lounge, it took him a moment to focus on Skye. She was sitting with her legs pulled up to her chest, her cheek resting on top of her knees. Her shoes were on the couch, which he’d warned her against-- it was white upholstery, after all-- but nevermind. She looked so small and alone. _SHIELD’s fault,_ that voice in his head insisted. Then, _If she’d been mine…_

He knelt down in front of Skye and put his right hand on top of hers, while he cupped her cheek with his left. For the first time since the 0-8-4 had hit, she didn’t pull away. “I’ll never send you away. No matter what SHIELD says. Never lose you,” he told her. _“Never.”_

“Are you just saying that,” she said, her voice choked with tears, “so that I’ll stop the upload?”

“No. You were right about that-- it’s a great idea. You keep the upload going. Screw SHIELD. No more secrets. The world deserves to know.”

***

Back in the lab, Simmons was staring at Fitz’s blood sample with the aid of a head lamp to compensate for the dying power of the Bus while anxiously wracking her brain. There must be something there she’d missed, something out of the ordinary, but her mind was frozen in panic. Coulson was down. All along she’d been the only person on the Bus who could fix this, but now she was the only person on the Bus who could fix _anything._ She felt the pressure of this responsibility like a physical force, pressing down on her, making it difficult to breathe, impossible to think. She tried to focus on breathing first, inhaling and exhaling slowly in time to…

What was that hissing noise?

She looked up to see May, who had evidently become bored without her game partner, spray painting words on the walls. She had already written, in giant letters, “LOVE MANKIND,” and was now finishing up, “MORE HUGS.”

“Agent May,” Simmons called out. May turned around, grinning. “I just want to make sure-- you know you can’t hug me, right? Because of the 0-8-4?”

May nodded. “But there should be more hugging here, don’t you think? Just in general.”

“Sure,” Simmons replied. She had to look at this problem one step at a time. First, she should get May out of the lab so that she could work in peace. She cast her eyes about for a distraction, and settled on her jar of pens. “Here!” She held up a black Sharpie. “Ward is still unconscious-- why don’t you go draw something amusing on his face?”

May’s face lit up. “All right!” Simmons tossed the Sharpie to her, and she ran up the stairs.

Which left Simmons alone-- well, except for poor, knocked-out Fitz. Fitz wanted to save them, and she could use his help at that right about now. When she looked down at him, she remembered Coulson’s words: _He’s afraid he can’t. He didn’t want us to see how much it matters to him._ The thought of it brought tears welling up, but she blinked them back. Fitz was depending on her now-- the whole team was depending on her-- and she would _not_ fail. 

She willed herself to think like an objective observer. She’d been examining Fitz’s blood for traces of an intoxicating substance, something which would depress his centers of judgment and self-control. Coulson’s observation about the subjects’ repressed qualities being targeted led her to suspect that this was something like an alien drug, one which targeted different aspects of the brain’s chemistry, and for which they, not having been exposed to it before, had no tolerance. The problem was that the blood tests she’d performed didn’t turn up anything substantially unexpected. 

Better direct her thoughts another way, then: unlike a drug, the effects of the 0-8-4 were passed from person to person with rapid effect through skin contact. If it spread through the air, she’d be experiencing the effects by now as well, and she had seen what contact with May had done so quickly to Coulson. She shivered as she recalled the look on his face, how within moments he’d begun to sweat profusely and…

Simmons thought back what seemed like days, but couldn’t have been more than two hours ago, when Skye had first come to her. What had she said? _“It’s just, my hands are kind of tingly? And sweating a lot.”_ She looked down at Fitz, whose forehead was beading with perspiration. He stirred as she gathered a sample with her pipette and went to work. He’d wake up soon; she didn’t have much time.

Fortunately, she didn’t need it. Taking the pipette, she carefully dripped the sweat on a slide. _Perhaps it’s in the perspiration, she thought. Whatever it is. Or the perspiration is the first breadcrumb in a trail to the solution._ She quickly slipped the slide under the lens of the microscope. After a few minutes of fiddling with the knobs and creating a molecular breakdown with the holotable’s programs, she brought up a diagram of the fluid’s contents. Everything seemed normal. Sodium. Potassium. Lactic acid. But then there was something that caught her eye, a complex chain that she missed because the substance was so mundane. But it was there-- it had been there all along, hiding in plain sight; the change had just been too small to see. She quickly compared it to the molecular contents and structure of the blood sample. Sure enough, it was there as well. 

“It’s water,” she murmured.

On the table beside her, Fitz groaned. “Jem? What happened? Are you all right?” He struggled to sit up. “Did someone shoot me?”

She started. “What? No! Of course not! Why would someone shoot you?”

He squinted at her through groggy eyes. “Did _you_ shoot me?” She gave him a sheepish look. “Oh. That’s all right, then. I don’t mind if it was you.” 

She eyed him in consternation. “You don’t?”

“No. I’m sure you had a good reason.” His eyes flashed as the dendrotoxin started to wear off, the effects of the 0-8-4 beginning to reassert themselves. “As long as you’re not hurt. Ward didn’t go after you, did he? Do you need me to go… go get him?”

“No, Fitz. I’m fine,” she replied softly. “And Ward has been restrained. We’re safe.”

“Good. Why’s he acting like that?”

He looked so bewildered and helpless that she couldn’t help but smile a little. “It’s the 0-8-4 we found. It’s affecting all of you, but I think I’ve finally isolated the cause. Fitz, it’s _water!_ Isn’t that incredible? Somehow, on whatever planet that 0-8-4 came from, water changes to a complex chain of molecules.Can you believe it? That’s how I missed it! It passes from person to person through perspiration, and once in the bloodstream, it has a sort of intoxicating effect, although I suspect it targets some different areas of the brain than, say, alcohol-- why are you looking at me like that?”

Fitz shrugged, but he still had a dopey smile on his face, and something about the way his eyes fixed on her made her blush. “You’re pretty when you figure things out.” He must have misinterpreted her look of surprise because he added, quickly, “I mean, you’re pretty all the time. And smart all the time. I know I don’t tell you that enough. Or ever. But I should.”


	9. Part 9

Coulson turned his head towards the command center. In its last few minutes of life, the holotable had managed to produce a weak alarm - a proximity warning. The Russians were less than ten miles away, and the bus was still a sitting duck.

He rose from the floor, his limbs feeling heavy and sluggish. He didn’t want to be in command anymore. He didn’t want to be responsible for all of this. But he pressed on anyway, because he cared for his team. _That’s what it is, really,_ he thought. _I don’t care for the agency. I care about the agents. Maybe not Victoria. But everyone else._ He made his way towards the command center, which was quickly fading into lifelessness. The screen was dim, and the noise was so quiet that he had to concentrate to hear it. Before it blinked into blackness, the screen showed a map with tiny red dots moving toward the bus’s wreckage. Coulson briefly wondered if they’d be some sort of armored car or snowmobiles.

In the haze of his mind, he guessed they had ten, maybe fifteen minutes left.

 _I have to get everyone out of here,_ he thought. His whole self railed against the prospect of returning to duty, to getting the Bus up and running and heading towards the next SHIELD base. What would he do when he saw another agent heading straight for him? What would he say when he saw Fury next? But right now, that didn’t matter. Despite the choking sensation he felt in his throat, he pressed on towards the lab.

 _I know why they call ships “she.”_ He thought. _If I didn’t have this Bus, I’d be with Audrey. But I do have this Bus. And this Bus, this job, it’s the “she” I get. It’s my life partner._

He struggled to push back his emotions, but in vain. This… whatever it was… it made control impossible. Everything about SHIELD was filling every crevice of his brain.

 _I need to focus on something else,_ he tried to tell himself. _If I must think about SHIELD, I’ll think about the agents._ He let the emotions he felt towards his team begin to well up more strongly in his chest, filling him with worry and concern. He had to protect them, didn’t he? He’d promised Skye he would never leave her. He couldn’t abandon her to the Russians. _SHIELD hurt Skye. Department X will do so much worse. She’ll always be alone._

He passed May, bent over and giggling as she drew a large penis on Ward’s face with a sharpie. The smell of it filled Coulson’s nostrils, making him dizzy, but he made no move to stop her. Instead, he turned his face away and dragged his hands along the walls of the Bus, steadying himself as he glided through the hallways and down the metal staircase to the cargo hold.

At the bottom of the stairs, he heard Fitz scream.

***

Simmons blinked in surprise when Fitz screamed. She hadn’t expected her serum to cause pain. It was simple enough. Just a few enzymes. Relatively quick to make. She had even made a point of adding a bit of the dendrotoxin to calm the nerves as the enzymes broke down the complex water chains into the simple structure Earth was accustomed to seeing. But Fitz’s high-pitched voice pierced through the lab, and Simmons wondered if she would have to hear everyone’s cries of pain or just his as the first test subject and needle-phobe of the group.

When the screaming stopped, Fitz looked around in confusion. “I was… in the cargo hold,” he said. “Jemma, what am I doing in the lab?”

Simmons smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck, her joy unable to be contained. She wanted to hold him forever and forget the Russians. At that moment, they weren’t in danger. There were no enemy soldiers. No Centipede or SHIELD or broken Bus. There was no mysterious 0-8-4. There was only him and her. She had her best friend back.

But what had he been saying just before she injected him with the serum?

_I mean, you’re pretty all the time. And smart all the time. I know I don’t tell you that enough. Or ever. But I should._

As much as she wanted to ask him about it, she knew he wouldn’t remember saying it if the last thing he recalled was the cargo hold. This apparent memory loss was extremely inconvenient. Would he explain what he meant if she asked him? _Probably not. The emotional barriers are back up._ Did he really think she was pretty? _He would never admit to saying that in a thousand years. He never had before._ Still, the thoughts itched at the back of her mind, but rather than dwelling on them, she just marvelled in the brilliance of her serum and basked in the joy of having her closest companion back to his regular self.

“It worked!” Simmons said, pressing her forehead into Fitz’s shoulder with relief. “The serum worked! Fitz! I’m going to make more!”

“Can I get up now?”

She released him from her embrace and turned towards her equipment, a small bounce in her step. It worked! She had done it! And, judging by the materials that lay before her, she had just enough for everyone else on the Bus. _As soon as we are up and running, I can tell SHIELD how to make more._

But they weren’t up and running yet.

The door to the lab slid open and Coulson stumbled across the threshold.

“Agent Simmons,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth between her and Fitz, who was sitting on the holotable and squeezing the moisture from his wet curls around his forehead in confusion. Simmons smiled pleasantly at him.

“Sir, I’ve isolated the irritant,” she reported. “It’s water.” She looked at him carefully and saw his neck muscles straining above his shirt collar. But for the most part, he seemed to be at least functional. She wondered how much information she could load on him before he slipped back into chaos.

“Save the explanations for later,” Coulson interrupted. “Can you fix it?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I tested it on Fitz and aside from some memory loss, he seems to be back to normal. I’ve just started producing more serum for the rest of the team.”

“Memory loss?” Fitz piped in, clearly panicked. Simmons silenced him with a look.

Coulson began to fidget and his eyes took on a glossy look. He seemed to be struggling to stay in the moment. “Fitz,” he said, trying to articulate clearly. “I need you to fix the engines and get us up in the air.” He closed his eyes and opened them again, very slowly. Simmons thought she heard him whisper _“god”_ under his breath.

“Ok,” Fitz replied dumbly. “I’m no plane expert, though.”

“Just enough to get us to Vienna. We’ll have specialists take a look at it there.” His hands were shaking.

“Right. I can convert some power from our other systems into flight maintenance. The power from the fridge in the kitchen and the environmental controls will have to go. It’ll be chilly and the cabin will probably smell like sour milk for a while.”

“About that...” Simmons said meekly. “Some of the team may have… drained the power while you were inhibited.” _Poor Fitz. How will he take the news of the team discovering the holotable games? All his high scores gone._

“What?” He scratched his head. “Who was stupid enough to do that?”

“They found the racquetball program.” Fitz’s jaw dropped open. Simmons spoke as if the words physically pained her. “And the air hockey.” His eyebrows shot up. “And the bowling.” He swore.

“Later, Agent Simmons,” Coulson cut her off. He was sweating, making him look uncomfortable in his suit. He fell silent as Fitz reached for a tablet and began pulling up the data from earlier, adding his own calculations and current conditions of the Bus. Simmons took a step back and tried to concentrate on manufacturing more serum. The sight of her commanding officer unraveling like this unsettled her, creating a strange juxtaposition between the discomfort and the elation from Fitz’s recovery. Shaking her head, she found comfort in the familiar routine of their old synchronized science, moving through the lab with their coordinated grace.

Coulson, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be capable of standing still. “How long before we’re up in the air?” he asked. Fitz tapped his screen.

“At the least, half an hour. But judging from this energy drain, I can’t guarantee the Bus will fly.” 

Coulson shook his head. “I need us to be in the air in ten.” He blinked slowly again.

Fitz looked flabbergasted. “What?” he said, trying to find his words. “Why?”

“The Russians will be here by then.”

“Russians?” Fitz bit his lip, trying to remember. “Yes. I thought they were still a ways away.”

“Well,” Simmons said. “We’ve just spent 120 minutes trying to stop everyone from going completely insane.” She leaned in and whispered in Fitz’s ear. “You locked yourself in the cockpit and sang The Proclaimers.” His face and ears immediately turned pink, so she added, “Don’t worry. As soon as we inject everyone else, they won’t remember a thing.”

“Except you, of course,” Fitz whispered back. Simmons winked.

“Fitzsimmons!” Coulson snapped, bringing out an irritability they hadn’t quite seen before on the Bus. Their superior seemed less worried about the danger and more angry at their dawdling. What was he slipping back into? He looked about ready to collapse, and Simmons briefly considered administering a stimulant to keep him on his feet.

“Sir, I at least need thirty minutes,” Fitz said. “I need to patch up the damage and safely reroute the little remaining power we have. If we’re lucky, we might be able to sort of skip the Bus into Ukraine but no farther. Even then, Ukraine’s not exactly free from Department X control.”

Coulson gripped the holotable for support. Simmons could see the sweat making trails down the sides of his face. “We need to evade Department X as much as we can and we need to move now.” He was close to shouting.

“I could reroute some of power from the remaining energy in the lab once Simmons finishes her serum, but even if we managed to take off, we can’t do it in ten minutes!” Fitz was close to screaming. “It’s bloody freezing outside, which means the engines are ice cold. They won’t work right away, even if we wanted them to. I can’t change the laws of physics.”

“There’s got to be another way!” Coulson yelled, his knuckles turning white.

Simmons looked up from her work. “What about… I don’t know. A controlled explosion?”

Fitz looked at her like she was crazy. “If you wanted to chance the odds of ten thousand to one, maybe, assuming we had all the materials and were working on the right formula for weeks.”

“We don’t have weeks,” Coulson said, his eyes closed. “We have minutes.” He opened his eyes and looked at Simmons. “Is that serum done yet?”

“Almost,” she replied. “I have to mix in a bit of dendrotoxin to dull the pain.”

“There’s no time for that,” Coulson snapped. “Inject May first. She needs to fly the Bus. Then the others.”

“Also, Skye needs to stop the upload.”

Fitz mouthed “What upload?” at Simmons, but she shook her head and mouthed “Later” back at him. Coulson shrugged, as if indifferent to the potential breach in security that awaited them upon takeoff. He reached towards Fitz, but checked himself and let his hand drop.

“What about you, sir?” Simmons asked. Coulson shook his head.

“Do everyone else first.” He leaned into his hands on the holotable, as if hoping they would stop him from collapsing. “Fitz,” he continued, his voice so pitiful it almost moved Simmons to tears. “You’ve got to get us out of here. You have no idea what Department X will do to us. I… I don’t want to go back to Tahiti.”

Fitz sighed. “Well… there is… an intermix formula. A theoretical connection between-”

“Do we have the right materials?” Coulson cut him off. Fitz looked at Simmons for a second before turning back to his commanding officer.

“I’ll see what I can dig up. Maybe some supplies from the medical pod. Maybe some of Simmons’ surviving chemicals. But with the limited resources, I don’t know how safe it will be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Coulson said, his voice sounding sad and tired. “Will it get us out of Russia?”

Fitz looked at his feet. “I don’t know.”

Coulson sighed. “Do it anyway. Do it before we’re all doomed.”

Fitz and Simmons looked at each other briefly before running out of the lab, leaving Coulson standing there alone over the holotable.

***  
May didn’t even flinch when Simmons gave her the serum. She made no sound. She didn’t scream. She just closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she asked if Fitz was still in the cockpit.

“He’s down fixing the engines,” Simmons explained. “I gave him the same serum I just gave you. It has a side effect of a little memory loss-”

“Memory loss?”

“Just a little.”

“How long was I out?”

“You weren’t out, exactly.”

May’s face was stern and scary. “How long, Simmons?”

Simmons guessed what May really wanted to know. “Department X will be here in eight minutes.”

May said nothing and instead sprinted to the cockpit. Simmons sighed. _One down, three to go._

Suddenly, the interior lights blinked on, and Simmons could hear the whirr of the Bus as power flowed back through the fuselage.

“Good old Fitz,” she whispered to herself, and spotted Skye huddled on the couch. Her limbs were all drawn together, and she had her laptop hugged to her chest.

“Don’t come any closer!” she warned as Simmons approached. The latter shoved the injector into Skye’s arm, causing her to let out a small squeal as the serum was pushed into her veins. Skye blinked and slowly uncurled herself.

“Simmons…?” she said, her eyes quickly darting around the room. “How did I get on the Bus? I was just collecting samples at that 0-8-4 site.”

“No time for tiny details,” Simmons replied, gearing up to deliver a fast-paced speech. “You contracted some kind of alien compound that spreads through water and makes you act irrationally. The Bus is crashed and some unethical Russian scientists are heading straight for us. Fitz is trying to jump start the engines and May’s in the cockpit, but we might still die anyway. You timed your laptop to upload our entire hard drive to the internet upon takeoff so not only are we in terrible danger, but we’re also about to spill all of SHIELD’s secrets to the world.” 

Skye looked so stunned she could hardly move or speak.

“What?” she said.

“Just stop the upload,” Simmons instructed. “I’ll fill you in on the details later.”

She ran to Ward, who had woken up and was now crying thick, wet tears, causing some of the sharpie to leave black streaks down his face.

“I never told my grandmother,” he sobbed. “I never told her I loved her.”

“What?” Simmons said, her face twisting in confusion. _Ward crying? Big, tough Agent Grant Ward who jumps out of airplanes and takes down super soldiers?_ The sight was jarring, to say the least.

“It must have been hard for her,” Ward continued. “Knowing how messed up her kids and grandkids were. She was the sweetest lady.”

“That’s… nice.” She awkwardly patted him on the leg, careful not to touch his skin. She walked behind the chair to try to get at Ward’s exposed arms, but as soon as she ducked out of sight, he yelled at her.

“Don’t!” he called, his voice containing both panic and that tone he used when commanding missions. “Don’t go where I can’t see you!” He dangerously began to rock the chair, preventing Simmons from getting a clean and clear shot at his arm. _Can’t stick him while he’s moving so much, she thought. Could cause a laceration. Then he’ll bleed all over me._

“Okay,” Simmons said, shuffling back into his line of sight. He stopped rocking. _I could stick him in the neck,_ she thought, _Or shove it through his shirt._ She reached out to pull the collar of his shirt back, to expose his skin, but in her eagerness and haste, the material ripped, exposing his broad, muscular shoulder. “Oops. Sorry.”

“Simmons!” Ward desperately pleaded, his eyes growing wet again. “Please. Help me. The friendship I feel for you, for the team… I’m ashamed. It’s a weakness.”

Simmons found her sympathy giving way to irritation. _I’ve had enough of confession time for one day._ “It’s okay, Ward.” She injected him with the serum.

Grant Ward grunted and blinked rapidly, ceasing the tears and adopting once more the soldier’s persona he was so accustomed to wearing. “Simmons?” he asked. He pulled against his restraints. “Why am I tied to a chair?” An inky black teardrop ran down onto his lips, making him cringe at the taste. “What’s on my face?” She didn’t want to be the one to tell him about the Sharpie penis, so she just bit her lip and ran behind him to loosen his ties.

The lights blinked and the plane began to rumble. A proximity alarm blared throughout the whole cabin with a deafening shriek. “Five minutes until enemy contact,” came an automated voice. Simmons struggled to untie Ward as he pulled more and more, thwarting her efforts. She had a mind to swat him to keep still.

“Five minutes?” Ward said angrily. “How long was I passed out?”

“You weren’t exactly passed out,” Simmons began to explain. But before she could continue, the whole plane shook, causing the lights to flicker once more.

“What’s going on?” Ward demanded.

“Fitz is starting the reaction,” she said, finally freeing Ward from the chair. He leapt to his feet and ungracefully tripped over his tied shoelaces, falling, very un-soldier-like, on his face. It was all Simmons could do to stifle a giggle as Ward swore.

“Reaction?” He began fidgeting with his laces.

“More like explosion. It’s going to provide the combustion needed to start the engines since we don’t have enough energy left in the Bus.”

“Will it get us out of this snow?” Ward freed his feet from each other.

Simmons shrugged. “It might. It might not. But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

“Four minutes until enemy contact,” the voice chanted again. The plane began to shiver and Simmons could hear a revving-up sound coming from below them. Was Fitz alright?

“I need to go down to the lab,” she said hurriedly to Ward. “Make sure Skye stops the upload!” Without waiting for a reply and leaving him confused, she ran towards the stairs, skipping them two at a time and gripping the last dose of the serum in her hand. _I have to get to Fitz,_ she thought. _Then I have to inject Coulson._

She saw Coulson in the lab, sitting on the floor and leaning against the holotable, his head resting in his hands. Fitz was sitting next to him, a remote triggering device clutched tightly between his fingers. His thumbs hovered above the detonator, a simple button atop a wild bunch of fuses and cords leading out the cargo hold and, presumably, into the engine chamber. His face was twisted in concern and skepticism. Two of the DWARFs landed at Fitz’s feet and Simmons reached out a hand as she heard him countdown.

“Three… two… one.”

All she remembered was a deafening roar as her body was thrown backward onto the floor of the cargo hold.


	10. Part 10

There was a noise as though the plane was ripping apart inside, then the crush of gravity and a sharp tilt upwards, then a turbulent leveling-out.

It had worked. His team was damn good. Coulson felt a rush of pride and affection so strong it nearly brought him to tears.

He hauled himself to his feet, gripping the stairway railing as the plane shuddered under him. Only a few feet away, Fitz was scrambling over to Simmons, calling her name. She was hurt-- how badly, he didn’t know, and there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t touch her-- or Fitz either, now-- couldn’t comfort them or make them safe. There was only one thing he could do now to help them, to help his team. 

It was so simple. He should have done it ages ago, couldn’t think why he hadn’t. Only he’d been afraid before, and now he wasn’t; SHIELD had tripped him up with red tape before, but how his plane held the solution to the 0-8-4 problem, and that should get him anything he wanted.

The walls and floor seemed to tilt and dip around him, and he wasn’t sure if the sensation was real or not, the product of their dire mechanical troubles or of his own infected mind. His hands, dripping sweat, slipped on the railings, but he managed to make his way up the stairs and into the lounge.

Skye was on her laptop, safe and sound despite the explosive takeoff, and Ward was for some reason holding his shoes in his hands.

“For the last time, Ward, I did not tie your shoelaces together!” Skye exclaimed, not looking up from the screen in front of her.

“Well, then who the hell did?”

“I don’t know, I was blacked out!” 

“So you _could_ have done it!”

Skye let out a frustrated sound. “I’ve kind of got bigger things to deal with here! And,” her lips twitched a little as she glanced up at his recently-illustrated face, “frankly, so do you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Coulson staggered toward her. “You keep that upload going, Skye.”

Now she did look up. “But… but Simmons said…”

“Forget what Simmons said. I’m in charge. Do it.” He continued to move back toward his office.

Skye twisted around to address him. “But _why_?”

“Because I said so.”

He propelled himself onward. Behind him he heard Ward ask, “What’s he talking about?”

Coulson shut his office door behind him and checked a few readouts. It was as he’d hoped: Fitz’s experiment had given them enough power to restore communications.

***

When Simmons opened her eyes, Fitz’s face was about seven centimeters from hers, almost filling her entire field of vision. She saw him let out an enormous sigh of relief, and blinked.

“Did the plane blow up?” she asked.

“No. No, we’re in the air. It worked!” He smiled.

“Oh, brilliant, Fitz! I knew you could--” She had pushed herself halfway into a sitting position when he grabbed hold of her arms.

“No no no no, don’t sit up too fast. Are you concussed?” He held up one hand with three fingers extended. “How many fingers?”

“Three.” She winced. Her head was throbbing and she would undoubtedly have a colorful mosaic of bruises in short order, but she didn’t think she was seriously injured. Her vision was clear, no dizziness or nausea, so she probably didn’t have a concussion. “How long was I out?”

“I don’t know, thirty seconds? I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you on the stairs, otherwise I’d have waited until you were secured to something before I detonated. You went flying and smacked your head on the floor, and… God, I’m so sorry, Jemma.”

She gently probed the back of her head where, unsurprisingly, a bump was already forming. “What on Earth for? Fitz, you saved us.” She let out a short laugh. After all his alien-induced fuss about jumping in and saving the day, here they were, and he’d actually done it. Fitz looked sheepish, and Coulson’s words came back to her: _He didn’t want us to see how much it matters to him._ She found herself hugging Fitz tight again, there on the floor of the lab, and she might have stayed there for hours had a question not suddenly occurred to her.

“Where did Coulson go?”

“Oh, um…” Fitz looked around, bewildered. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice he’d gone.”

Simmons stiffened and looked wildly about her. Pain hammered at the back of her skull. “Where’s the injector? I had one dose of serum left, I need it for Coulson, where is it?”

Fitz jumped up and the two of them began a frantic search, looking in corners, under tables, knowing that, after that rocky takeoff, the remaining serum could have ended up anywhere. Simmons could only put it down to sheer luck that, after a minute or so, Fitz called out, “Simmons! It’s under this cabinet! I need your skinny arms to reach it!”

Simmons retrieved the injector, which was mercifully unbroken, transferred the serum into a clean one, and darted up the stairs, Fitz following on her heels. In the lounge, Ward was peering intently over Skye’s shoulder as she hunched over her laptop, glaring at the screen.

She was muttering, “Shit shit shit shit shit, why would I do this?”

“Come _on_ , you can do this, this is supposed to be your _thing_ ,” Ward said. His fists were clenched, and he was sweating almost as much as he had under the influence of the 0-8-4.

Simmons stopped short. “Oh no, you haven’t stopped the upload yet?”

“Let’s just say that I am very good, and in this case that is very bad. I apparently changed the password on the uploader, only I can’t remember what I changed it _to_ , and none of my usual ones work.”

Simmons frowned, but then an idea hit her. “Have you tried any old ones? Was there something you used to use, say, as a teenager?”

Skye hesitated only a moment, then typed something, darting sideways glances at the others to make sure they weren’t trying to see. Her eyes widened. “That was it! Okay. I’ve got this now.” 

“Have you seen Coulson?” Fitz asked. 

Ward nodded. “He came through here a minute ago. He told Skye not to stop the upload.”

“Yeah, I didn’t listen because that’s crazy,” Skye said as she entered a series of commands, never taking her eyes from the screen. “He did _not_ look good.”

“He went back toward his office, I think,” Ward told them.

Fitz cocked his head. He just had time to ask, “Wait, what’s on your face?” before Simmons grabbed his arm and pulled him after her toward Coulson’s office.

The two of them darted up the stairs and burst through the door, where Simmons skidded to a stop and Fitz plowed into her, nearly knocking her over. She grimaced and raised a hand to the bump on the back of her head as the jolt sent a sharp pain radiating out from that point. She half expected that when she opened her eyes, the sight which had brought her up short would have disappeared, but it hadn’t.

Coulson had discarded his suit jacket and tie, which was disconcerting enough, but on top of this he was staring down the screen to the right of the door, and displayed on that screen was the face of Director Fury himself.

“Dammit, Coulson!” Fury was ranting. “I’ve got idiotic behavior spreading through the Hub like some kind of epidemic, Victoria Hand has declared herself the new Director of SHIELD, and meanwhile _your plane_ , which is supposed to be bringing the evidence and personnel we need to figure out why the hell this is, goes off the damn grid!”

“We’ve had some mechanical difficulties,” Coulson said quietly. That was what struck Simmons the most-- how quiet he was, and yet how dangerous he seemed. “And I’ve used the downtime to get a new perspective on things. I didn’t even have to die this time! So let me put it this way: you’re going to tell me about the T.A.H.I.T.I. project. You’re going to tell me everything you did to me and _why_. And then I’ll consider delivering the solution to this alien problem you’re having.” 

If Fury was taken aback, he did nothing to reveal it other than raise his eyebrows. “You figured out how to stop this?”

“My team did-- Jemma Simmons-- come here, Jemma.” 

Simmons hesitantly stepped in front of the viewscreen. “Hello, Director Fury. Sir.” She wasn’t sure what to do now. It felt wrong to inject Coulson with the serum in front of Fury-- it would make him look vulnerable, even weak, and she knew that Coulson was sensitive about how he was perceived by the higher-ups at SHIELD after the Battle of New York. Still, what he was doing now could be irrevocably damaging to his career. While she tried to puzzle out the best course of action, Coulson beckoned Fitz to join them.

“And Fitz fixed the plane,” he said, “keeping us from falling into the hands of Department X.”

Fitz waved, looking uncomfortable. “Hello, Director. Honor to meet you.”

Coulson ploughed on. “That’s how we do things on this plane. We’re a family. I used to think of SHIELD as my family, that we’d do anything for each other, so I overlooked some of the fuzzy morality. But you lied to me-- you’ve done nothing but lie and manipulate me for-- how long, Nick?”

Fury sighed. “Agent Coulson, there will come a time and a place to discuss this, but this is not it. Be aware that you are on _very thin ice_.”

“And so are you,” Coulson snapped. “Right now I have one of my team ready to release access to SHIELD’s secrets onto the internet.”

“And why the _hell_ is that?” Fury demanded.

“Because I can’t trust you. If I can’t trust you, who can? Who’s safe? What is Project T.A.H.I.T.I., Nick?”

Fitz and Simmons were frozen where they stood, paralyzed by a sort of fascinated horror. Fury opened his mouth, either to give Coulson his answers or to vent his rage. They never found out which it would have been, because at that moment Skye and Ward burst through the door.

“I stopped the upload! It’s okay, I stopped it!” Skye blurted out. While Coulson was distracted, Simmons lunged forward and managed to inject him with the serum. He gave a strangled cry and collapsed into a sitting position on the floor.

There was a tense pause, interrupted by Nick Fury’s voice demanding to know, “What in the goddamn hell is going on up there?! I heard ‘mechanical trouble,’ I heard ‘Department X,’ I heard Phil Coulson threaten treason. What’s this upload which may or may not be happening? Agent Simmons, why did you attack your superior officer? And Agent Ward, why on Earth do you have penises drawn on your face?”

“What?” Ward swiped at his forehead, trying in vain to erase the offending illustrations.

“And what appear to be cat whiskers,” Fury added. “Well? Somebody get talking!” The five agents crammed into Coulson’s office exchanged glances.

From his place on the floor, Coulson asked, “What happened? Are we getting chewed out?”

Fury snapped, “Somebody get me Melinda May!”

***

It was a day later, more or less. While the Bus was under repairs in Vienna, Simmons was transmitting instructions to the Hub on how to contain the effects of the 0-8-4, which was by that point affecting some 70 people there. When it became clear that she was also the only person entirely cognizant of what had happened on the Bus during the time her team was, as it were, under the influence, she was whisked away to debrief.

When she returned to the Bus, utterly exhausted, she found that the other members of her team had stationed themselves at intervals where they could casually bump into her between the door and her bunk. Coulson and May apologized for their unprofessional conduct. Ward, looking like a kicked puppy in the kitchen, apologized for his violent behavior. Simmons assured them all that they weren’t in control of their actions, and thus had nothing to apologize for. Skye, in the lounge, said, “I am so, so sorry I touched that dead guy. Seriously. Lesson learned.” Simmons, unable to forget the version of Skye who had thought they would all gladly be rid of her, replied that they were just glad to have her on the team, and that her skills more than made up for the occasional rookie mistake. 

“I mean, you stopped that upload!”

“Which I started in the first place.”

“Still! Well done, Skye.”

Fitz was actually in her bunk, waiting for her. He didn’t apologize. Instead, he asked, “Did I do anything really embarrassing? I mean, I know about trying to fly the plane, you told me, and everyone else does know about that, by the way-- but did I say anything to you or… anybody?”

For a second, Simmons toyed with the idea of letting him know he’d called her pretty and teasing him mercilessly about it. But something in his eyes gave her pause, and instead she said, “No.” He looked skeptical, so she quickly added, “Well… the singing. Did I tell you about the singing?”

He left her bunk with an expression of pure relief on his face.

After that, she hid. She needed to sleep, but found that she couldn't. Simmons liked the way this team lived and worked together; she liked the way they each fitted. She knew that, as a scientist, she should be able to separate what had happened with the 0-8-4 from their everyday lives, and that had certainly been her intention when she’d come back onto the plane. As far as was possible in her debriefing, she’d been deliberately vague about individual behaviors the 0-8-4 had brought out, not wanting to be the cause of flags in anyone’s files, and had hoped that the whole incident could simply be put behind them. 

But already she could see that this was a naive intention. She was more careful with Skye and Ward now, because she’d seen something in each of them which was fragile. She’d never forget what it sounded like when Melinda May laughed. She’d even learned something new about Fitz, which she would have thought impossible. Now she’d have to see him all the time with that new knowledge in her brain. The 0-8-4 hadn’t affected her in the way it had everyone else, but it had affected her perhaps more permanently, and if she told Fitz, the one person to whom she usually told everything, it would change him, too. What then? And the rest of the team-- would they resent her, now that she knew things about them they’d never intended to reveal? On the other hand, if she put everything she’d seen out in the open, would they ever be able to move past it?

When she finally emerged, Simmons was unsurprised to find that they were all waiting for her in the lounge. She stopped short. She knew as well as they did that, if they questioned her, she couldn’t convincingly lie. That was why she had formulated an approach which would, she hoped, circumvent the issue.

“No,” she declared. “No. I’m not saying _anything_.” It was, she had decided, the best option. If she bore the burden alone, they all had a better chance of returning to normalcy more quickly. 

“We’ve been able to put a lot of it together by comparing notes,” Skye said. “There’s just a few gaps we wanted filled in.”

“No!” Simmons repeated emphatically. “I just spent hours explaining that no one on this plane _really_ wanted to bring down SHIELD, and the only reason I got away with it is that Agent Hand and Director Fury want to forget it ever happened. I suggest we follow their lead. No one died, no one was seriously hurt, no one was court martialed, and that’s all that matters.”

In the ensuing pause, Simmons sat down next to Fitz and crossed her arms in an expression of defiance.

Finally, Ward said, “I just want to know who tied my shoelaces together and graffitied my face. I mean, we’re all adults here. Who _does_ that?”

From where Simmons sat, she could see May stiffen by a fraction. Her eyes met Coulson’s. He was the only other person who knew how the 0-8-4 had affected May, and he apparently hadn’t said a word. His expression was unreadable. The biochemist grimaced. “It was… me.”

“Come on, Simmons, we all know it wasn’t you.” Fitz rolled his eyes.

Ward leaned forward. “It was Skye, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t me!” the hacker exclaimed.

“Once again, how do you know?”

“Yeah, none of us remember what we did,” Fitz contributed. “That’s why we’re not in major trouble, like Simmons said.”

Skye flopped back in defeat. “Fine, I don’t know, maybe it was me.”

“I knew it!” 

“But you’ve got to believe that, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, Skye, we all know that,” Simmons said quickly. “We all trust you completely.” A look of suspicion passed across Skye’s face like a cloud, and Simmons imagined she saw worry, too, as Skye wondered what exactly she knew. “And Ward,” Simmons redirected her attention, “I honestly did not see who drew on your face.” It wasn’t a lie; she’d only handed May the Sharpie. After that, anything could have happened.

“All right, all right,” Coulson said. “That’s enough. It’s been a hard couple of days. Let’s all go get some schnitzel.”

As everyone got to their feet, Simmons finally felt herself relax. She looked up, and May gave her a nod and smile so minute she could almost think that she’d imagined it. Fitz grabbed her hand and pulled her up to stand beside him. Maybe everything was, after all, going to be all right.


End file.
